GIFT  OF 


THE  STRATEGY  OF 
GREAT  RAILROADS 


BY 

FRANK   H.   SPEARMAN 


WITH    MAPS 


CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 
NEW   YORK::::::::::::::::  1906 


COPYRIGHT,  1904,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  November,  1904 


TROW  DIRECTORY 

WUNTINO  AND  BOOKBINDING  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 


TO 

WILLIAM    C.    BROWN 

VICE-PRESIDENT  OF  THE  NEW  YORK  CENTRAL 
AND  THE   LAKE  SHORE  RAILROADS 


182286 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  VANDERBILT  LINES. i 

THE  PENNSYLVANIA  SYSTEM 21 

THE  HARRIMAN  LINES 47 

THE  HILL  LINES c     69 

THE  FIGHT  FOR  PITTSBURG ->     91 

THE  GOULD  LINES  .     . »  113 

THE  ROCK  ISLAND  SYSTEM ,  133 

THE  ATCHISON I55'" 

THE  CHICAGO,  MILWAUKEE  AND  ST.   PAUL  .     .175- 

THE  CHICAGO  AND  NORTHWESTERN     .     .     .     .195. 

THE  REBUILDING  OF  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  .   213' 

THE  FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    .     .  235- 

THE  EARLY  DAY  IN  RAILROADING      ....  263 


LIST   OF   MAPS 

FACING 
PAGE 

The  New  York  Central  Lines  ........  12 

The  Pennsylvania  Railroad  System       .      .      .      .      .      .  24 

The  Harriman  Lines 48 

The  Hill  Lines     ...    V    .    V    *     ...     .      .  72 

The  Wabash  System .     .      .      .  96 

The  Gould  Lines 120 

The  Rock  Island  System 144 

The  Atchison,  Topeka  and  Santa  Fe  Railway  System  .  1 60 

The  Chicago,  Milwaukee  and  St.   Paul  Railway  .      .      .  1 80 

The  Chicago  and  Northwestern  Railway.      .     *.     .      .  204 
The  Chicago  and  Alton  Railway   .      .      ..     ..     .214 


THE   VANDERBILT    LINES 


THE    VANDERBILT    LINES 

ON  the  lower  river  front  of  a  little  New  Jersey 
town,  flanked  on  the  one  hand  by  dreaming  hulks 
of  rheumatic  towboats,  and  on  the  other  by  the 
decaying  buildings  of  a  past  generation,  stands  a 
forsaken  hotel.  Its  windows,  framed  once  to 
cheer,  stare  wide  and  sightless  upon  the  street,  and 
its  heavy  oak  doors  swing  crazily  to  every  wind ; 
its  floors  creak  uneasily  under  strange  feet  and  its 
broken  halls  echo  vacantly  to  living  voices.  Only 
bats  and  spiders  and  wood-worms  seek  its  hospi- 
tality now;  yet  to  the  American  railroad  world 
this  ruin  ought  to  be  of  singular  interest. 

The  name  of  the  place  was  once  the  Steamboat 
Hotel — the  genius  of  its  owner  breaking  out  even 
then  in  the  title  he  chose  for  his  inn.  But  the 
venture  was  never,  at  its  best,  all  that  its  founder 
hoped.  What  now  lends  strange  interest  to  the 
shabby  landmark  is,  that  out  of  the  magic  of  its 
early  days  have  risen  stately  palaces,  lofty  fa£ades, 
a  dynasty  of  American  railway  magnates,  the 
splendor  of  Oriental  dreams,  and  a  system  of 
transportation  unapproached  in  the  story  of  the 

3 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

world;  for  under  the  roof  of  this  New  Brunswick 
ruin  Mrs.  Vanderbilt,  it  is  said,  saved  the  first  eight 
hundred  dollars  that  gave  her  husband,  the  Com- 
modore, his  start  in  the  transportation  business. 

To-day  the  Vanderbilts  are  the  merchant  princes 
of  the  railway  world.  Yesterday,  on  their  own 
lines,  they  handled  70,000  cars ;  to-morrow  it  may 
be  100,000.  When  the  founder  of  the  system 
began  in  those  early  days  to  wrestle  with  problems 
of  transportation,  when  he  was  getting  his  first 
taste  of  competition  and  rate  wars  and  was  carry- 
ing passengers  by  boat  from  New  Brunswick  to 
New  York  for  sixpence,  with  their  dinners  (per- 
haps literally)  thrown  in — the  straight  tariff  being 
two  shillings — Spain  still  retained  a  vast  American 
empire ;  but  the  Vanderbilt  dynasty,  growing  ever 
more  powerful,  has  seen  the  last  vestige  of  Spanish 
sovereignty  wiped  from  the  maps  of  two  conti- 
nents. When  the  founder  of  the  Vanderbilt  for- 
tunes lay  in  swaddling  clothes  the  house  of  Baring 
Bros.  &  Co.  stood  at  the  height  of  its  power,  and 
its  founder,  Sir  Francis  Baring,  was  writing  his 
"  Observations  on  the  Founding  of  the  Bank  of 
England."  When  this  young  Cornelius  Vander- 
bilt, the  future  Commodore,  had  reached  the  ob- 
scurity of  his  twenty-first  year,  Nathan  Rothschild, 
already  powerful,  was  spurring  upon  London 
with  the  secret  of  the  French  defeat  at  Waterloo ; 


The  Vanderbilt  Lines 

but  the  Vanderbilts  have  lived  to  see  the  name 
of  many  capitalists  forgotten  and  the  fame  even 
of  the  greatest  equalled  by  their  own. 

Busied  with  its  transportation  concerns,  the 
house  saw  the  earliest  alignment  of  those  political 
movements  in  the  United  States  that  resulted  in 
the  most  stupendous  civil  conflict  of  modern 
times.  They  stuck  to  their  ferryboats  and  their 
junk  rails  when  Beecher  was  the  pulpit  and 
Greeley  and  Bennett  and  Raymond  were  the  press 
of  this  country.  While  still  active  in  their  busi- 
ness they  have  seen  the  rise  of  every  existing 
political  party,  and  they  may  easily  survive  the 
obsequies  of  the  last  of  them  as  they  stand  to-day. 
In  the  stage-coach  and  the  canal  mule  they  met 
and  overcame  the  threatening  competition  of  fifty 
years  ago;  and  their  forces  would  face  to-morrow 
with  equal  steadiness  a  billion-dollar  invasion  of 
their  railroad  territory.  They  alone,  in  all  the 
railroad  world  of  to-day,  go  back,  owners  and 
managers  in  unbroken  succession,  of  the  tele- 
phone, the  cable,  and  the  telegraph.  Nor  in  all 
that  time  have  they  ever  wrecked  a  railroad  or 
maintained  a  poor  one. 

The  Vanderbilts  are  not,  of  choice,  fighters; 
they  have  been  conservative  and  well-balanced 
merchants.  No  other  family  can  lay  claim  to 
titles  such  as  theirs  to  great  and  honorable  achieve- 

5 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

ment  as  masters  of  transportation.  To  meet  ob- 
jection let  it  at  once  be  conceded  that  the  meaning 
we  attach  to  these  adjectives  is  relative.  But  if 
we  consider  a  moment,  what  other  combination 
in  industrial  enterprise  can  boast  a  more  colossal 
and  creditable  monument  than  the  New  York 
Central  lines  ? 

Aside  from  their  remarkable  history,  Vanderbilt 
affairs  are  of  present  moment  in  American  railroad 
control  because  they  are  so  powerful  both  in  the 
extent  of  their  holdings  and  the  character  of  them. 
A  map  of  the  New  York  Central  lines  is  start- 
ling. At  first  glance  the  spread  of  their  ramifica- 
tions would  seem  to  cover  the  United  States. 
There  are  in  the  various  systems  under  this  con- 
trol 1 2,000  miles  of  railroad ;  but  these  figures 
do  not  tell  all.  It  must  be  remembered  that  a 
Vanderbilt  line  is  always  a  good  line.  If  they 
buy  a  streak  of  rust — and  first  and  last  they 
have  bought  many — they  make  a  good  railroad  of 
it.  The  outcast  youngster  is  fumigated,  scrubbed, 
and  properly  clothed  before  he  is  allowed  to 
take  his  place  at  the  foot  of  the  Vanderbilt  table, 
with  the  aristocratic  New  York  Central  and  the 
emotionless  Lake  Shore.  The  acquiring  of  the 
Nickel  Plate  years  ago,  and  that  of  the  Lake 
Erie  and  Western  very  recently,  are  cases  in 
point.  Moreover,  how  shall  the  mere  mileage  of 

6 


The  Vanderbilt  Lines 

any  system  reckon  in  comparison  with  New  York 
City  terminals  that  are  in  themselves  equal  in 
value  to  whole  divisions  of  roads  spread  over 
desert  stretches  ?  It  is  asserted  by  an  alert  pas- 
senger department,  and  no  doubt  with  truth,  that 
more  than  one-half  the  people  of  the  United  States 
live  in  the  territory  covered  by  the  Vanderbilt 
lines;  certainly  the  people  within  their  territory 
are  the  active  half  of  the  country.  Vanderbilt 
steamboats  plough  the  great  lakes  from  end  to  end 
with  the  speed  and  with  the  capacity  of  freight 
trains  many  times  enlarged ;  and  their  rails,  ignor- 
ing political  boundaries,  are  factors  in  the  trans- 
portation systems  of  Canada.  Vanderbilt  lines 
are  powerful  in  New  England,  and  they  make 
their  rates  over  their  own  roads  at  Toronto,  at 
London,  and  at  Montreal.  Their  cars  and  their 
boats  may  be  found  side  by  side  at  the  Straits  of 
Mackinac,  and  their  roads  stretch  thence  in  un- 
broken joints  to  the  Mississippi,  at  St.  Louis  in 
Missouri  and  at  Cairo  in  Illinois.  They  intercept 
the  Illinois  River  at  Peoria;  they  tap  the  Ohio 
River  at  its  starting  point  with  a  road  that  earns 
$68,000  a  mile,  and  strike  it  again  and  again — 
now  at  Wheeling,  at  Cincinnati,  and  at  Louisville 
— and  they  abandon  it  only  at  its  mouth. 

If  to  this  map  the  spheres  of  Vanderbilt  influ- 
ence are  added  we  should  be  compelled  to  annex 

7 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

the  territory  of  the  whole  Northwest  with  the 
Chicago  and  Northwestern  system  and  its  branches 
of  8,000  miles  spreading  as  far  west  as  Wyoming, 
penetrating  the  Black  Hills,  and  pushing  docks 
from  Marquette  to  Duluth  into  Lake  Superior. 
Happily,  however,  and  contrary  to  popular  im- 
pression, the  Northwestern  is  not  a  Vanderbilt 
line,  their  interests  in  it  being  only  those  of  a 
moderate  minority.  Nevertheless,  at  our  greatest 
inland  railroad  gateway,  Chicago,  three  of  the 
most  powerful  lines  of  the  Vanderbilt  system  re- 
ceive the  traffic  oyf  the  Northwest  from  every  road 
of  importance  and  exchange  for  it  their  commodi- 
ties from  the  dense  territory  on  the  Atlantic  sea- 
board. And  notwithstanding  the  immense  ton- 
nage delivered  to  the  New  York  Central  lines  by 
their  Western  and  Northwestern  connections,  the 
great  system  gives,  in  turn,  to  each  of  them  a  ton- 
nage materially  greater  in  amount  than  it  receives 
— demonstrating  eloquently  the  resources  of  the 
territory  that  it  serves. 

Paradoxical  as  it  may  be,  it  is  true  that  the  Van- 
derbilt lines  east  of  the  Chicago  gateway  are  too 
strong  to  own,  or  at  least  to  grant  exclusive  favors 
to,  any  one  line  into  the  West  or  Northwest. 
The  great  transportation  capacity  of  the  Michigan 
Central,  the  Lake  Shore,  and  the  Big  Four  means 
that  they  must  receive  from,  as  well  as  give  to, 

8 


• 


The  Vanderbilt  Lines 

connecting  lines  a  huge  volume  of  freight.  The 
traffic  the  Vanderbilt  lines  exchange  with  the  St. 
Paul  road,  for  example,  is  far  too  large  to  be  dis- 
turbed by  any  exclusive  interchange  at  Chicago, 
and  it  is  this  particular  feature  of  traffic  inter- 
change that  bobs  up  at  every  step  in  railroad  con- 
solidation to  disturb  the  dreams  of  railroad  kings. 
The  Alton,  for  instance,  may  be  considered  the 
natural  link  in  the  Harriman  lines  to  Chicago,  but 
when  can  the  Union  Pacific  afford  to  ignore  what 
the  Northwestern  road  has  to  offer,  if  treated 
fairly  ?  Mr.  Hill  is  a  director  of  the  Erie  road, 
but  he  could  hardly  venture  to  stop  Burlington 
interchange  of  traffic  with  the  Lake  Shore  and 
the  Michigan  Central. 

The  truth  is,  that  which  people  continually  see 
in  the  railroad  sky  is  consolidation,  and  there  are 
periodical  outbursts  of  alarm  at  the  menace  of  rail- 
road monoply.  What  people  do  not  realize  is  that 
the  country  all  the  while  is  growing  faster  than 
the  railroads;  that  it  is  constantly  ahead  of  all 
successful  transportation  combinations,  and  that 
railroad  consolidation  is  only  a  reflection  of  the 
country's  development  in  every  other  direction. 

The  New  York  Central  lines,  because  they  are 
made  up  of  some  of  the  oldest  railroads  in  the 
country,  afford  many  interesting  data  on  the  ques- 
tion of  consolidation,  since  first  and  last  they  are 

9 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

all  consolidations.  Their  beginning  goes  back  to 
the  New  York  Central  Railroad,  seventeen  miles 
long,  in  1831  ;  but  the  most  advanced  anti-mon- 
opoly champion  of  1904  could  hardly  stand  for 
separate  lines  of  railroad  in  Kansas,  much  less  in 
New  York  State,  seventeen  miles  long.  The  de- 
velopment of  the  richest  country  in  the  world — 
that  covered  by  the  Vanderbilt  rails — has  always 
forced  the  investments  of  the  house  ahead  even  of 
its  ambitions.  The  problem  of  the  New  York 
Central  lines  has  never  been  so  much  to  secure 
business  by  taking  it  from  competitors  as  to  pro- 
vide for  the  volume  that  has  naturally  fallen  to 
their  share.  Thus  the  study  ever  foremost  in  the 
system,  growing  so  fast  and  so  unwieldly,  has 
been  the  railroad  problem  of  operating  —  the 
handling  of  the  traffic. 

The  proper  fitting  to  its  place  of  each  extension 
and  each  newly  acquired  line  in  a  railroad  system 
such  as  this  is  in  itself  a  brain-racking  matter.  A 
concourse  of  the  railroad  presidents  of  such  a  com- 
bination becomes  a  domestic  congress  acting  as  a 
committee  of  the  whole,  in  which  measures  for 
the  well-being  of  each  branch  of  the  system  are 
considered  and  on  which  the  resources  of  the 
keenest  railroad  intellects  are  brought  to  meet 
the  exigencies  of  each  case. 

In  the  country  where  railroad  operating  has 
10 


The  Vanderbilt  Lines 

been  brought  to  so  high  a  degree  of  excellence  as 
in  this  it  is  impossible  to  award  the  credit  for  its 
development  to  any  one  railroad  system.  Each 
has  its  particular  achievements,  and  in  operation 
one  or  two  have  particularly  high  reputations.  Of 
the  Vanderbilt  interests,  however,  it  must  be  said 
that  either  they  have  been  exceptionally  lucky  or 
exceptionally  wise  in  attracting  to  themselves  a 
type  of  executive  men  who  are  always  bigger  than 
anything  laid  down  in  railroad  books.  "  System  " 
is  recognized  pretty  generally  to-day  as  a  requi- 
site in  the  successful  conduct  of  any  business;  but 
successful  men,  better  than  others,  understand 
the  grave  danger  that  lies  in  system.  No  railroad 
can  afford  to  let  any  system  of  operation  ossify  on 
it.  In  reality,  system  in  any  business  is  but  a 
necessary  evil,  and  the  best  system  is  tearing  down 
all  the  time  as  well  as  building  up. 

Herein  the  New  York  Central  lines  show  to  an 
unusual  degree  their  power  in  the  transportation 
world.  That  adherence  to  rules  which  under  small 
men  paralyzes  a  railroad's  activities  becomes  under 
the  Vanderbilt  staffs  a  code  elastic  enough  to  cover 
an  emergency  rather  than  rigid  enough  to  cause  one. 
The  heart  of  the  Vanderbilt  lines  is  the  New  York 
Central;  but  in  its  operation  it  is  never  for  q 
moment  forgotten  that  "system"  was  made  foi 
the  New  York  Central  and  not  the  New  York 

ii 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Central  for  system.  The  New  York  Central  lines 
breathe  through  the  Lake  Shore  road;  but  the 
Lake  Shore  code  of  operation  is  most  surprising 
in  its  flexibility  and  its  easy  adaptation  to  the  one 
supreme  end  of  getting  results.  That  which  may 
have  seemed  good  railroading  on  the  Lake  Shore 
when  these  words  are  written  may  seem  poor  rail- 
roading by  the  time  they  are  printed.  Every  day 
almost  the  viewpoint  changes  to  meet  new  con- 
ditions, and  every  day  from  the  outposts  of  the 
New  York  Central  lines  letters  go  to  headquar- 
ters from  trained  observers — high  executive  offi- 
cials— bearing  a  heading  that  is  always  the  same : 

THE    SITUATION 

We  feel  that  wjTget  news  in  the  daily  press; 
so  we  do.  But  as  to  the  special  news  that  bears 
continually  on  the  interests  of  the  New  York 
Central  lines,  one  should  see  these  private  daily 
journals.  The  men  that  write  them  are  past- 
masters  in  the  school  of  journalism  and  draw  sala- 
ries beyond  the  dreams  of  editors.  Every  day 
their  articles  bear  the  one  insistent  title :  THE 
SITUATION 

As  shifting  as  the  sands  of  the  Mississippi,  un- 
certain as  the  freaks  of  fortune,  and  at  times  as 
startling  as  a  political  revolution  is  this  daily  busi- 
ness situation.  The  millions  of  people  in  the 

12 


V      QF'TW 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


THE   NEW    ' 


£         8          £         C 


RAL   LINES. 


The   Vanderbilt  Lines 

grain-producing  territory  of  the  Missouri  River 
country  and  the  Mississippi  Valley  are,  or  ought 
to  be,  vitally  interested  in  the  question  of  Gulf 
transportation  for  their  export  grain,  but  they 
know  nothing  about  the  roads  that  supply  their 
Gulf  outlet;  not  so,  however,  the  Vanderbilts. 
From  month  to  month,  week  to  week  if  need  be, 
they  know  the  exact  physical  condition  of  every 
road  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico — their  own  rivals  in 
the  transportation  of  grain  to  the  seaboard.  If  a 
Gulf  road  is  so  poor  in  condition  and  equipment 
as  to  be  harmless  the  fact  is  known  at  Forty- 
second  Street  in  New  York,  and  every  step  to 
better  it  is  there  carefully  noted.  The  rise  and 
fall,  the  growth  and  decay  of  every  American  in- 
dustry, if  it  bears  even  collaterally  on  railroad  in- 
terests, is  malted  by  the  New  York  Central  lines. 
Grain,  for  instance,  is  their  most  important  east- 
bound  commodity,  and  Chicago  is  a  great  thor- 
oughfare for  the  grain  traffic.  Grain  is  fifty  per 
cent. — one-half — of  the  entire  eastbound  business 
of  the  Lake  Shore  road  from  Chicago;  yet  so  in- 
credible are  the  industrial  activities  of  Indiana, 
Michigan,  Ohio,  and  Pennsylvania  that  this 
enormous  item  is  but  nine  per  cent,  of  the  total 
business  of  the  Lake  Shore. 

However,   200,000,000  bushels  of  grain  pass 
through  the  Chicago  gateway  in  a  single  year. 

13 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

In  the  development  of  this  business  Chicago 
elevators  have  become  of  huge  importance.  It  is 
these  enormous  and  picturesque  piles,  whose  pro- 
portions mark  the  skylines  of  the  Chicago  sunset, 
that  have  been  for  years  a  compelling  factor  in 
grain  transportation.  They  have  stood  during  a 
generation  as  a  monument  of  Chicago  industrial 
enterprise,  and  but  a  few  years  ago  the  last  of  them 
were  being  built  with  the  bribe  of  big  bonuses  to 
contractors  for  their  rapid  completion,  and  the 
struggle  of  men  against  the  elements  to  make 
these  huge  receptacles  ready  within  an  imperative 
limit  has  been  the  subject  of  stirring  romance. 
Within  recent  years  a  Chicago  road  in  condemn- 
ing for  terminal  purposes  the  site  of  a  Chicago 
elevator  was  compelled  in  court  to  cover  the 
ground  with  gold.  To-day  it  is  harAy  too  much 
to  say  that  could  the  railroad  have  waited  it  might 
in  time  have  acquired  the  site — so  far  as  its  value 
for  elevator  purposes  is  concerned — for  the  taxes. 
Chicago  has  an  elevator  storage  capacity  of 
50,000,000  bushels  of  grain — the  regular  houses 
37,000,000  bushels,  and  the  grain  "hospitals," 
where  grain  is  dried  and  cleaned  or  mixed  for 
grades,  13,000,000  bushels.  Within  recent  years 
there  have  been  as  high  as  30,000,000  bushels  of 
grain  in  storage  in  Chicago.  No  more  impres- 
sive example  of  the  daily  readjustment  of  traffic 

14 


The  Vanderbilt  Lines 

conditions  can  be  had  than  in  the  story  of  the 
downfall  of  the  elevators  in  the  economy  of  trans- 
portation. Two  years  ago  these  elevators  held 
12,000,000  bushels;  last  year  their  store  had 
shrunk  to  9,000,000  bushels ;  to-day  it  is  4,000,- 
ooo  bushels.  The  fate  of  the  elevator  is  a  revela- 
tion of  the  pitiless  movement  of  The  Situation. 

There  is  quite  as  much  grain  as  ever,  but  pros- 
perity has  so  intrenched  the  Western  farmer  that 
he  is  no  longer  compelled  to  sell  on  the  day  that 
he  threshes  out  his  crop.  Moreover,  the  constant 
trend  in  railroad  affairs  is  to  transport  commodi- 
ties without  rehandling.  In  grain  this  means  an 
important  economy  to  the  shipper,  inasmuch  as 
storage,  insurance,  and  delay  are  thereby  done 
away  with.  The  reading  public  may  or  may  not 
be  familiar^ith  these  constantly  changing  phases 
of  the  industrial  world;  but  by  the  New  York 
Central  lines  each  of  them  is  marked  as  impas- 
sively and  as  accurately  as  a  doctor  at  a  sick-bed 
notes  a  rising  or  a  sinking  pulse. 

In  another  way  the  perfecting  of  the  operating 
of  modern  railroad  systems  has  made  of  Americans 
very  notably  a  hand-to-mouth  people.  The  last 
generation  laid  in  its  supplies  in  the  fall  for  the 
winter;  this  generation  buys  from  day  to  day. 
The  country  merchant  bought  then  twice  a  year ; 
he  buys  now  twice  a  week.  Why  carry  stock 

15 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

when  trains  run  so  often  and  it  has  been  made  so 
easy  to  get  goods  ?  If  within  a  hundred  miles 
of  his  jobbers  he  hardly  takes  the  time  to  write  a 
letter;  he  telephones.  The  travelling  man  no 
longer  makes  a  sixty-day  trip.  He  sees  his  trade 
once  a  week  or  once  in  two  weeks,  and  covers 
three  or  four  towns  in  a  day. 

We  become  thus  wholly  dependent  for  the 
necessities  of  life  on  the  masters  of  transportation, 
and  because  we  lean  on  them  more  and  more  the 
slightest  break  in  their  facilities  becomes  each 
year  a  more  serious  matter.  Again,  such  a  break 
causes  most  unlooked-for  changes  in  the  whole 
situation  of  supply  and  demand.  The  anthracite 
coal  strike  caused  distress  to  millions  of  people 
who  depended  for  fuel  on  hard  coal.  But  the 
railroads  are  like  ants;  taking  no^account  of 
damage  they  set  at  once  about  repairing  it. 
Soft-coal  roads  found  in  The  Situation  an  oppor- 
tunity to  exploit  their  fuels,  with  the  result  that, 
a  year  later,  boats  laden  with  anthracite  coal  could 
not  find  room  in  Chicago  to  unload  their  car- 
goes— their  docks  being  already  piled  high  with 
hard  coal  for  which  there  were  no  customers :  the 
railroad  had  shown  too  easy  an  escape  from  an- 
thracite annoyance  and  expense. 

Prosperity  gives  the  operating  officer  even  se- 
verer tests.  In  the  high-tide  periods  of  business 


The  Vanderbilt  Lines 

every  weak  spot  in  the  operating  department 
makes  itself  felt.  This  is  the  moment  in  which 
reputations  take  wings,  and  it  is  in  crises  such  as 
these  that  the  Vanderbilt  lines  have  not  been 
found  wanting. 

Their  operation  suggests  at  once  the  precision 
of  a  military  discipline.  What  is  most  striking 
is  that  in  their  code  the  stiffness  of  the  martinet 
is  wholly  absent.  The  operating  officer  of  such 
lines  as  the  New  York  Central  and  the  Lake 
Shore  has  his  battalions  in  the  motive  power,  the 
car  equipment,  and  the  division  staffs  that  are 
under  him,  and  he  handles  all  with  an  absolute 
authority.  The  car  and  the  train  movements  of 
his  system  lie  every  morning  tabulated  before  him, 
and  this  man  and  his  like  become,  in  effect,  the 
field  marshals  of  our  daily  bread.  He  moves 
every  day  thirty,  forty,  fifty  thousand  cars  of 
freight.  He  divines  from  his  frequent  reports 
the  hard-pressed  spots  in  the  far-flung  lines  of  his 
train  movements,  and  with  his  reserves  massed  he 
strengthens  his  divisions  wherever  weak  spots 
develop.  Nor  are  these  figures  of  speech  in  any 
degree  fanciful ;  they  are  as  hard,  as  practical  as 
possible.  It  is  no  uncommon  thing  for  midnight 
orders  to  empty  roundhouses  at  Buffalo,  Utica,  or 
Syracuse  and  hea"d  a  battery  of  New  York  Cen- 
tral engines  westward  to  forestall  a  blockade  at  a 

17 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Lake  Shore  terminal.  If  the  pressure  is  reversed 
Lake  Shore  motive  power  is  thrown  with  equal 
celerity  into  the  fight  to  strengthen  car  movement 
on  the  New  York  Central.  The  plan  sounds 
simple,  but  within  very  recent  years  railroad  sys- 
tems of  high  repute  in  operating  have  been  com- 
pletely tied  up  because  motive  power  to  move 
trains  was  lacking  on  one  division,  or  on  one 
road  of  the  system,  while  on  another  motive 
power  was  standing  idle  in  the  roundhouses. 

Prosperity  has  for  three  years  put  a  freight 
traffic  strain  on  American  railroads  comparable  to 
a  steady  World's  Fair  pressure  in  passenger 
movement.  The  weakest  link  in  the  operating 
chain  of  all  our  roads  has  become  so  apparent  un- 
der the  test  that  a  competent  operating  officer  has 
need  to  say  to  a  railroad  owner  only  this :  Show 
me  your  terminal  facilities  and  I  will  give  you  the 
earning  power  of  your  road.  So  precisely  is  this 
true  that  there  have  been  times  when  the  entire 
activities  of  the  Vanderbilt  system  were  restricted 
to  the  facilities  of  their  intermediate  terminals — 
when  the  effective  power  of  so  great  a  railroad  as 
the  Lake  Shore  has  been  very  strictly  limited  by 
two  freight  yards,  that  at  Elkhart,  Indiana,  and 
that  at  Collinwood,  Ohio.  Hence  it  is  that, 
turning  the  attention  of  railroad  operators  from 
the  lessening  of  grades  and  curves,  the  struggle 

18 


The  Vanderbilt  Lines 

to-day  is  a  constant  endeavor  to  enlarge  terminals, 
and  a  Vanderbilt  requisition  for  a  new  freight 
yard  frequently  calls  for  a  million  dollars.  Their 
lines  show  to-day,  with  those  of  the  Pennsylvania 
road,  the  most  interesting  examples  in  the  world 
of  terminal  improvement,  the  highest  present  strat- 
egy in  railroad  competition. 

A  slight  consideration  of  these  besetting  "  feat- 
ures "  of  the  Eastern  railroad  situation — the  pres- 
sure of  traffic  and  operating  problems  on  the 
various  lines  as  they  now  stand — will  make  clear 
the  apparent  apathy,  so  far  as  new  fields  of  con- 
trol are  concerned,  of  the  most  powerful  interests 
in  the  American  railway  world.  It  is  more  than 
true  that  they  all  have  their  hands  full  to  keep 
pace  with  the  pressure  of  the  situation  as  it  is 
reflected  in  the  bursting  growth  of  the  country. 
That  they  must  meet  its  demands  is  evident,  and 
to  do  this  may  well,  as  it  does,  engage  all  their 
abilities  without  listening  to  the  promptings  of  a 
wider  ambition. 


THE   PENNSYLVANIA  SYSTEM 


THE   PENNSYLVANIA   SYSTEM 

LAY  a  hand  over  a  map  of  the  Pennsylvania 
lines,  and  the  circulation  of  the  blood  through  the 
one  suggests  the  circulation  of  traffic  through  the 
other.  When  Garrett  extended  the  Baltimore 
and  Ohio  westward  he  saw  only  St.  Louis  and 
Chicago,  and  ran  nothing  but  trunk  lines.  The 
Pennsylvania  System  is  so  fed  and  strengthened, 
division  by  division,  that  each  link  is  in  itself  al- 
most a  self-sustaining  unit.  On  its  intricate  map 
each  branch  has  a  particular  reason  for  being; 
each  has  been  definitely  thought  out  and  added 
because  it  has  a  function.  Capillaries  are  as  essen- 
tial to  the  circulation  of  the  blood  as  arteries,  and 
one  great  source  of  Pennsylvania  Railroad  pros- 
perity lies  in  its  capillaries. 

The  system  covers  the  industrial  heart  of  the 
continent.  North  of  the  Potomac  and  the  Ohio 
its  lines  are  strong  at  all  traffic  points  from  the 
Mississippi  River  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard.  But 
the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  in  its  essential  strength, 
stands  for  the  State  of  Pennsylvania,  to  which,  as 
a  State,  an  industrial  pre-eminence  has  so  long 

23 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

been  accorded  that  the  country  has  become  de- 
cently resigned  to  its  marvels.  Its  anthracite  coal 
alone  would  make  it  the  richest  of  our  possessions ; 
its  soft  coals  and  cokes,  its  iron  and  gas,  have  made 
the  Pittsburg  district  first  in  the  world  as  a  traffic 
centre. 

Pittsburg  itself  is  a  Pennsylvania  Road  fortress. 
Its  river  benches  are  lined  with  steel  plants  and 
factories,  and  its  river  banks  are  revetted,  tier 
upon  tier,  with  Pennsylvania  siding  tracks.  Penn- 
sylvania trains  are  made  up  under  the  smoke  of 
its  rolling  mills  and  converters,  and  Pennsylvania 
shifting  engines  ceaselessly  patrol  its  industrial 
camps.  There  is  but  one  Pittsburg;  its  locomo- 
tives are  shipped  to  Siberia,  its  bridges  span  the 
rivers  of  Africa  and  .of  India,  and  the  battles  of 
Russia  and  Japan  are  fought  behind  its  armor- 
plate. 

Iron  and  steel  thus  become  heavy  factors  in 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  freight.  But  even  steel 
tonnage  sinks  into  obscurity  when  put  beside  that 
of  coal.  East  of  Pittsburg,  in  1903,  the  road 
moved  seventy-seven  million  tons  of  coal  and 
coke.  The  history  of  the  Pennsylvania  Road  is 
in  a  way  the  history  of  the  State.  The  story  goes 
back  to  the  crossing  of  the  Alleghany  Mountains 
by  means  of  waterways  and  inclined  planes.  Then 
comes  a  Titan,  an  American  engineer,  John  Edgar 

24 


. 


WISCONSIN 


I  C  H  I  G  A 


I 
ST. 


CHICAGO!/    V 


lurlington 
iLaHarpe 


(eokuk 
,  Warsaw 


L   I 

Decatur 


Crawfo   , 


FARRINGTON 


3end 


_ 
TOLEDO 


st.K 


Vincennes 


lot 


Jefferson  i 
New  Albany 


Morrow 
CINCINNATI 


idison 


"LOUISVILLE 


MISSOURI 


K         E         N        T         U        C         I 


THE    PENNSVLV 


li.koAl)    SYSTEM. 


OF  THE 

UNJYERSITr 

OF 


The  Pennsylvania  System 

Thomson,  who  runs  the  pioneer  grades  and  spikes 
the  iron  rails  clear  across  the  summit  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies.  Thomson  laid  the  foundations  of  the 
greatness  that  underlies  the  present  Pennsylvania 
System ;  he  made  it  possible  to  move,  as  this  road 
does,  one  million  tons  of  freight  in  a  single  day 
on  one  American  railroad.  The  Pennsylvania 
men  of  to-day  would  laugh  if  compared  to  Thom- 
son. "We  are  specialists,"  they  say,  "that  is, 
pigmies.  Thomson  was  great  in  everything — 
operating,  traffic,  motive  power,  finance ;  but 
most  of  all  in  organization." 

Tradition  under  such  circumstances  becomes 
an  influence,  and  the  Pennsylvania  System  has  an 
unbroken  tradition  of  nearly  sixty  years  of  suc- 
cessful railroading.  Stress  is  laid  most  of  all  on 
organization,  a  legacy «rounded  out  and  bequeathed 
from  management  to  management.  Nor  has  any 
railroad  speculator  ever  succeeded  in  seating  him- 
self in  the  saddle  of  Pennsylvania  affairs;  for 
fifty-nine  years  the  company's  destinies  have 
been  controlled  by  its  owners,  the  stockholders, 
and  annually  they  have  approved  or  disapproved 
its  policies.  In  return,  they  have  received  what 
few  American  railway  investors  can  boast — a  satis- 
factory return  on  their  shares  for  every  calendar 
year  since  1846.  It  can  hardly  occasion  surprise, 
then,  that  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  should  enjoy 

25 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

high  credit;  it  has  earned  an  international  repu- 
tation for  good  faith. 

With  a  background  of  such  united  effort  and  a 
success  so  unusual  it  is  not  hard  to  understand 
why  Pennsylvania  standards  and  practice  are  held 
high  among  American  railroads.  In  1861  the 
Pennsylvania  Road  put  the  first  steel  fire-box  under 
an  American  locomotive  boiler.  The  Pennsyl- 
vania was  the  first  of  our  roads  to  lay  steel  rails 
and  the  first,  in  1 863,  to  lay  Bessemer  rails  in  this 
country.  It  was  the  first  to  use  the  air-brake  and 
the  signal  block  system.  The  Number  One  shop 
still  standing  at  Altoona  was  the  first,  in  1873,  to 
use  an  overhead  crane.  In  1852  the  Pennsylvania 
Road  moved  70,000  tons  of  freight  in  a  year ;  it 
now  moves  that  much  in  an  hour.  It  handled, 
then,  half  a  million  passengers  in  a  year,  now  it 
cares  for  a  hundred  and  twenty-three  million. 
The  system  that  once  mustered  fifty  engines  now 
counts  2 15,000  freight  cars,  and  a  single  shop  plant 
at  Altoona  turns  out  five  new  locomotives  every 
week. 

This  is  high-pressure  railroading.  Pennsylvania 
plans  need  to  be  laid  on  an  unexampled  scale,  for 
the  reason  that  nowhere  do  precedents  exist  for  its 
requirements.  Moreover,  peculiar  difficulties  at- 
tend the  operating  of  the  great  Pennsylvania  main 
line  across  the  higher  Alleghanies,  where,  the  traffic 

26 


The  Pennsylvania  System 

being  largely  coal,  the  movement  reaches  a  climax 
with  the  utmost  regularity  in  November  and 
March,  remaining  near  the  high  mark  during  the 
winter  months  between.  Thus  the  heavy  move- 
ment comes  against  the  elements  when  they  are 
at  their  worst.  If  it  could  be  shifted  to  July  and 
August,  when  engines  run  at  one  hundred  per  cent. 
of  their  rating,  no  especial  difficulty  would  be  felt 
in  mountain  railroading;  but  when  grades  are  to 
be  climbed  in  winter  storms,  with  engines  running 
at  fifty  per  cent,  and  sixty  per  cent,  of  their  effec- 
tiveness, the  problems  become  severe. 

At  the  best,  operating  cost  under  such  condi- 
tions stands  at  the  high  point,  and  a  railroad  needs 
the  most  ample  track  and  yard  room  if  the  charge 
is  not  to  become  excessive.  In  consequence,  a 
continual  effort  is  made  to  enlarge  Pennsylvania 
facilities.  An  Altoona  roundhouse  cares  for  250 
locomotives  every  day,  and  a  companion  house 
has  been  built  to  take  care  of  300.  The  Altoono 
plant  has  shopped  and  repaired  as  many  as  148 
engines  in  a  single  month. 

The  material  triumphs  of  Pennsylvania  man- 
agement are  thus  very  considerable ;  they  do  not, 
however,  by  any  means  engage  all  of  its  activities. 
Out  of  1,200,000  railroad  employees  in  this  coun- 
try, over  1 53,000  are  on  the  pay  rolls  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania System.  Here  is  the  heaviest  moral 

27 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

accountability  put  upon  any  existing  railroad 
management.  What  of  the  employees  ? 

When  a  man  enters  the  Pennsylvania  service 
he  may  at  once  protect  himself  with  insurance 
benefits  against  sickness  or  accident,  and  the  same 
agency  which  provides  this  health  and  accident 
insurance  pays  his  family  a  full  benefit  for  his 
death  from  any  cause.  The  Pennsylvania  em- 
ployee thus  has  offered  to  him  the  advantages  of 
several  insurance  companies  in  one.  This  Relief 
Department,  too,  considered  purely  as  insurance, 
enjoys  advantages  that  take  it  quite  out  of  com- 
parison with  ordinary  insurance ;  for  instance,  the 
company  pays  all  costs  of  its  operation.  Again, 
the  weak  feature  of  all  fraternal  insurance  is  its 
instability.  But  the  relief  insurance  provided  to 
Pennsylvania  employees  is  backed  by  the  entire 
responsibility  of  the  company,  a  mere  statement 
of  whose  assets  would  pale  the  figures  that  are  the 
joy  of  the  New  York  actuary.  Beyond  this,  the 
retired  employee  belonging  to  the  Relief  Depart- 
ment receives  his  superannuation  allowance  wholly 
distinct  from,  and  in  addition  to,  a  pension,  which 
is  likewise  provided  for  all  retired  employees. 

The  distinctive  feature  in  this  broadly  conceived 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  Pension  Fund  is  that  the 
employee  contributes  nothing  whatever  to  it  ex- 
cept his  years  of  faithful  service  to  the  railroad. 

28 


The  Pennsylvania  System 

The  company  pays  the  pension,  without  a  tax  or 
contribution  of  any  sort  from  its  employees,  and 
rejoices  to-day  in  one  pensioner  on  its  roll  of 
honor  ninety  years  old.  Boys  and  men  are  in 
this  way  made  to  feel  when  they  enter  the  service 
of  the  company  that  they  become  a  part  of  it; 
that  if  they  will  train  themselves  to  co-operate 
with  others  they  may  participate  fully  and  person- 
ally in  the  company's  success ;  and  that,  after  a 
career  of  faithful  service,  every  man,  from  the 
president  down  to  the  laborer,  will  receive — not 
as  a  charity  but  as  a  gratuity — his  life  pension. 

The  provisions  for  the  care  of  this  immense 
army  of  workers  do  not  end  here.  Many  Penn- 
sylvania employees  are  so  situated  in  their  duties 
that  safe  and  convenient  places  for  saving  a  por- 
tion of  their  wages  are  not  within  reach.  The 
Pennsylvania  Company  thereupon  turns  every 
ticket  agent  on  its  lines  into  a  depositary  for 
employees'  monthly  savings,  on  which  it  pays  to 
them  three  and  a  half  per  cent,  interest.  This 
Pennsylvania  Employees'  Savings  Fund  is  like- 
wise conducted  without  one  dollar  of  expense, 
direct  or  indirect,  to  its  fortunate  depositors.  It 
is  not  intended  as  a  place  for  the  investment  of 
the  funds  of  employees,  but  for  their  savings  for 
investment.  A  man  may  not  deposit  more  than 
$1OO  in  any  one  month,  nor  keep  above  $5,000 

29 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

on  balance  at  any  one  time,  and  employees  receiv- 
ing above  $300  a  month  have  been  excluded 
from  using  it.  But,  notwithstanding  these  restric- 
tions, the  aggregate  deposits  received  since  its 
founding  in  1887  exceed  ten  millions  of  dollars, 
and  since  that  time  more  than  one  million  dollars  of 
interest  have  been  allowed  to  Pennsylvania  Rail- 
road workers  by  the  Savings  Fund  trustees. 
Moreover,  six  millions  of  dollars  have  been  with- 
drawn by  employees  for  homes  and  investments. 

So  many  safeguards  mean  a  great  deal  of  pains- 
taking thought  at  headquarters,  and  it  comes  as  a 
surprise  to  learn  that,  in  return  for  duties  most 
exacting,  Pennsylvania  Railroad  directors  receive 
under  the  company  charter  no  compensation; 
but  in  the  State  of  Pennsylvania  no  position 
is  held  in  higher  esteem  than  that  of  director 
of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad;  it  is  a  badge 
of  honor  to  which  no  citizen  is  too  distinguished 
to  aspire.  These  directors  represent,  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  road,  a  continuous  line  of  able  finan- 
ciers, and  are  aided  in  their  work  by  four  addi- 
tional directors,  who  serve  as  vice-presidents :  S. 
M.  Prevost,  head  of  the  traffic ;  Charles  E.  Pugh, 
head  of  operations ;  Captain  Green,  in  charge  of 
the  general  finances,  and  Samuel  Rea,  specially 
charged  with  the  New  York,  tunnel  extension ; 
and  they  are  men  who  command  a  peculiar  loy- 

30 


The  Pennsylvania  System 

alty  from  their  subordinate  heads.  Indeed,  the 
officers  and  executives  of  the  Pennsylvania  Rail- 
road have  been  to  a  remarkable  degree  all-round 
men.  From  its  roll  of  engineers  alone  may  be 
named  J.  Edgar  Thomson,  Edward  Miller,  Will- 
iam B.  Foster,  George  B.  Roberts,  A.  J.  Cassatt, 
Herman  J.  Lombaert,  J.  N.  Du  Barry,  W.  H. 
Brown,  Strickland  Kneass,  and  Samuel  Rea. 
Vice-President  McCrea,  in  charge  of  all  company 
affairs  west  of  Pittsburg,  is  also  of  this  type  of 
men — not  alone  engineer,  but  thoroughly  trained 
railroad  man.  Thomas  A.  Scott  and  Frank 
Thomson,  though  not  engineers,  were  everything 
else  that  American  railroad  men  can  be,  and  their 
chapters  in  the  road's  story  and  their  services  to 
the  country  in  the  Civil  War  are  national  chapters. 
The  continual  problem  before  all  of  these  men 
has  been  to  keep  pace  with  the  transportation 
needs  of  the  most  highly  developed  and  most 
active  industrial  portion  of  the  United  States. 
Pennsylvania  management  of  necessity  stands  in 
high  light  in  the  worlds  both  of  transportation  and 
finance,  and  because  silent  under  controversy  and 
abuse  it  is  often  reproached  with  being  careless  of 
public  opinion ;  yet  silence  under  clamor  does  not 
needfully  imply  insensibility  to  criticism.  The 
situation  of  the  present  management  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania is  rather  that  of  men  under  the  pressure 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

of  serious  affairs,  and  endeavoring  day  by  day  to 
pass  for  the  best  on  very  difficult  questions.  In 
particular,  Mr.  Cassatt,  as  the  executive  front  to- 
day of  Pennsylvania  interests,  has  been  hotly  as- 
sailed as  a  disturber  of  public  tranquillity.  There 
seems  to  have  been  a  well-considered  attempt 
to  place  him  widely  before  the  American  imagi- 
nation as  a  sensational  type  of  railroad  chauffeur 
driving  a  motor-car  down  the  railroad  highway 
at  an  insensate  speed,  reckless  of  the  interests  of 
investors,  the  opinion  of  the  public,  and  the  com- 
mon rights  of  property.  But  to  set  him  forth  in 
this  light  has  called  for  the  most  complete  distor- 
tion of  the  man  as  he  really  is,  and  the  mere  sight 
of  this  Nestor  of  American  railroad  presidents 
wholly  dispels  such  a  conception. 

A  grave  man  and  somewhat  spare  in  his 
height,  with  the  slight  stoop  of  the  careful 
thinker ;  easily  quiet  but  perfectly  responsive.  In 
his  presence  no  atmosphere  of  "drive,"  hasty 
action,  or  confused  thought  suggests  itself.  This 
is  a  very  safe  man,  one  reflects  instinctively, 
deliberate  in  considering,  slow  of  judgment,  patient 
in  decision,  but  capable — when  action  must  come 
— of  a  tremendous  initiative  and  follow-through. 
The  source  of  such  strength  is  apparent  in  the 
man's  manner;  Mr.  Cassatt  has  the  simplicity  of 
Lincoln. 

32 


Tho  Pennsylvania  System 

One  could  easily  associate  this  executive  chief 
of  the  Pennsylvania  Road  with  a  farm,  but  not  so 
easily  with  an  automobile.  Met  on  a  highway 
in  Iowa,  one  would  expect  to  find  Mr.  Cassatt 
superintending  the  planting  of  a  six-thousand- 
acre  field  of  his  own  corn.  The  impression  under 
those  circumstances  would  be  that  such  a  man 
would  make  a  good  governor  of  the  State,  and 
no  surprise  would  be  felt  to  learn  on  inquiry  that 
he  had  been  governor.  Such  a  model  farm 
owner,  if  asked  about  the  adjustment  of  hoppers 
on  the  battery  of  corn-planting  machines  lining 
up  then  to  cross  the  field,  would  explain  with 
genuine  interest  that  he  had  adjusted  the  planters 
himself  after  they  left  the  factory  so  that  the 
hopper  should  deposit  in  each  hill  precisely  four 
kernels  of  corn,  and  not  occasionally  three  or  five. 
Or  if  you  remarked  on  the  sleekness  of  his  hun- 
dred teams  of  mules,  his  appreciation  of  the  com- 
ment would  lead  him  to  speak  of  the  popular 
misconception  concerning  the  mule  as  an  evil- 
tempered  laborer,  and  as  being  less  trustworthy 
than  the  horse. 

But  Mr.  Cassatt's  cares  and  responsibilities  do 
not  He  among  corn-planters  nor  along  Iowa  high- 
ways. They  have  followed  him  for  some  years 
as  the  head  of  one  of  the  most  important  railroads 
in  existence,  and  he  stands  with  his  associates  in 

33 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

this  management  as  trustee  of  an  investment  so 
huge  that  figures  lose  their  force  in  attempting  to 
express  its  measure.  The  Pennsylvania  System 
controls  nearly  one  hundred  and  fifty  corporations 
— mostly  railroad  companies — east  of  Pittsburg 
alone. 

About  the  time  Mr.  Cassatt  took  the  presi- 
dency very  grave  questions  became  apparent  on 
the  horizon  of  Pennsylvania  Railroad  affairs.  It 
was  evident  that  the  day  could  be  named  when 
the  traffic  of  that  large  portion  of  our  industries 
dependent  on  the  Pennsylvania  System  for  trans- 
portation would  swamp  its  existing  facilities. 
The  situation  needed  to  be  met  by  very  extensive 
additions  to  track  and  terminal  facilities,  and 
plans  were  at  once  laid  to  provide  them.  But  the 
day  of  congestion  came ;  the  day  of  a  traffic  flood 
so  terrific  as  to  burst  in  an  hour  from  the  control 
and  restraint  of  the  highest  transportation  facili- 
ties in  the  world. 

Strangely  enough,  the  very  measures  taken  to 
meet  these  wholly  new  industrial  conditions  have 
been  made  the  particular  object  of  hostile  com- 
ment. There  is  nothing  whatever  unnecessarily 
radical,  nothing  savoring  in  the  least  of  the  revo- 
lutionary in  the  present  Pennsylvania  better- 
ments. The  simple  truth  behind  them  is  that  for 
this  country's  industrial  expansion  so  great  an 

34 


The  Pennsylvania  System 

artery  of  our  transportation  system  must  be  con- 
tinually enlarged. 

Nor  is  this  policy  new  in  Pennsylvania  Rail- 
road history;  it  has  prevailed  for  fifty  years. 
Thirty-five  years  ago  the  Pennsylvania  Road  took 
on  itself  the  enormous  obligations  of  the  leases 
and  investments  of  that  portion  of  its  present  sys- 
tem known  as  the  "Lines  west  of  Pittsburg." 
There  was  at  the  time  abundance  of  criticism  for 
a  step  declared  to  be  rash  and  unwarranted ;  but 
will  any  stand  forth  to-day  to  declare  that  the 
western  terminus  of  the  Pennsylvania  should  have 
been  fixed  at  Pittsburg?  Thirty-three  years  ago 
the  Pennsylvania  Road  assumed  control  of  the 
United  Railroads  of  New  Jersey,  by  which  to- 
day it  reaches  New  York  City,  and  with  their 
control  it  assumed  the  obligation  of  a  ten  per 
cent,  dividend  on  the  stock.  For  many  years 
that  investment  steadily  showed  a  deficit  in  direct 
results  to  that  division  of  railroad,  but  is  there  one 
to-day  to  call  this  an  unwarranted  investment? 
The  connection  at  Philadelphia  by  way  of  the 
Delaware  River  bridge  with  the  West  Jersey  Sea- 
shore System  was  provided  at  a  cost  of  more  than 
two  and  a  half  millions  at  a  time  when  the  presi- 
dent and  none  of  his  staff  believed  it  could  be 
made  to  pay  for  years;  yet  the  investment 
paid  from  the  start,  and  if  a  slight  extra  fare  were 

35 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

not  imposed  that  gateway  would  be  swamped 
with  Atlantic  City  passenger  traffic. 

The  obligations  of  the  Pennsylvania  manage- 
ment are  toward  its  stockholders  and  the  investors 
in  its  securities;  but  there  is  also  a  very  definite 
obligation  toward  the  millions  of  people  of  the 
West  and  Southwest,  who  live  along  thousands 
of  miles  of  railroads  connecting  with  or  tributary 
to  the  Pennsylvania  System,  and  find  in  it  their 
sole  gateway  into  New  York  City;  and  unless 
these  people  should  still  be  compelled  to  change 
cars  and  baggage  in  Philadelphia  the  acquisition 
of  the  United  Jersey  roads  must  be  justified,  and 
it  has  by  unanimous  public  opinion  received  such 
justification  that  the  Pennsylvania's  New  York 
Division  is  now  on  an  equal  plane  with  the  Penn- 
sylvania main  line. 

Having  solved  these  problems  satisfactorily,  a 
further  grave  question  had  for  twenty  years  con- 
fronted the  Pennsylvania  management  and  been 
the  cause  of  much  anxious  study.  Should  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  remain  forever  on  the 
west  side  of  the  Hudson  River?  The  question 
was  not  one  to  which  an  answer  might  lie  open 
indefinitely.  Only  by  immediate  action  could  a 
passenger  terminal  in  New  York  City  be  obtained 
short  of  a  cost  absolutely  prohibitive.  Should 
the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  then  not  endeavor  to 

36 


The  Pennsylvania  System 

improve  upon  the  plans  conceived  by  Pennsyl- 
vania forefathers  ?  Should  it  consent  forever  to 
discharge  its  New  York  passengers  into  ferry- 
boats and  land  them  on  the  water-line  of  that 
city,  or  should  it  cross  the  Hudson  River  by 
bridge  or  tunnel  and  convey  them  to  the  centre 
of  Manhattan  Island?  The  consensus  of  opin- 
ion was  that  the  Pennsylvania  Road  must  ulti- 
mately land  its  passengers  at  New  York,  and 
without  unnecessary  ado  it  is  making  its  Hudson 
River  extension  by  tunnels;  and  Pennsylvania 
management  will  always  stand  justified  in  these 
immense  betterments.  , 

In  considering  Pennsylvania  improvements,  too, 
this  fact  must  not  be  lost  sight  of:  that  the  Penn- 
sylvania is  a  high-class  passenger  route.  Its  sys- 
tem accounts  for  one-sixth  of  the  whole  vast  total 
of  passengers  carried  by  all  our  railroads.  Between 
the  seaboard  cities  of  New  York,  Philadelphia, 
Baltimore,  and  Washington,  the  necessities  of 
this  public  service  cannot  be  compared  with  those 
of  any  other  in  this  country,  because  nowhere  else 
is  there  such  passenger  traffic.  Speed  is,  in  effect, 
an  American  demand ;  that  safety  must  precede 
speed  as  effectively  as  human  ingenuity  can  con- 
trive is  a  Pennsylvania  maxim ;  hence  a  million 
of  dollars  to  remove  one  danger  from  a  set  of 
running  tracks.  Every  minute  of  running  time 

37 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

between  such  cities  becomes  inestimably  valu- 
able ;  curvature  and  grade  must  be  reduced  to  a 
minimum  to  lop  off  every  possible  sixty  seconds 
between  terminals,  when  coachload  after  coach- 
load and  train  after  train  of  busy  people  follow 
one  another.  Track  elevation  through  interme- 
diate cities  helps  vastly  in  this ;  hence  the  extraor- 
dinary work  at  Newark,  Elizabeth,  and  New 
Brunswick,  the  straightened  line  at  Trenton,  and 
the  beautiful  four-track  stone-arch  viaducts  across 
the  Delaware  and  the  Raritan  rivers.  These  bet- 
terments afford  a  steel  highway  practically  level 
and  straight  from  Broad  Street  in  Philadelphia  to 
Jersey  City ;  and  at  Jersey  City  even  the  Hudson 
River  will  come  out  of  the  account  on  the  day 
when  the  Pennsylvania  passenger  steps  from  his 
coach  in  a  Pennsylvania  station  at  Seventh  Ave- 
nue and  Thirty-third  Street  in  New  York  City, 
one  block  from  Herald  Square. 

What  less  may  be  said  of  the  freight-traffic 
requirements  on  the  main  line  of  a  railroad  system 
which  last  year  carried  one-quarter  of  all  freight 
tonnage  moved  by  railroads  in  the  United  States  ? 
In  one  year  these  Pennsylvania  main  line  earnings 
from  freight  alone  exceeded  $116,000  a  mile, 
and  the  total  earnings  exceeded  $150,000  a 
mile.  The  present  management  has  been  com- 
pelled to  build  what  is,  in  effect,  a  duplicate 

38 


The  Pennsylvania  System 

Pennsylvania  road  over  the  Alleghanies.  Here, 
again,  certain  postulates  come  into  the  reckoning. 
If  one  is  to  undertake  four-tracking  in  a  moun- 
tainous country  one  must  be  at  least  sure  that 
his  railroad  is  in  its  final  resting  place ;  the  cost 
of  shifting  such  an  alignment  afterward  would 
bankrupt  a  kingdom.  All  grades  then  remaining 
and  all  curvature  must  remain  forever. 

To  handle  this  enormous  freight  traffic  double- 
tracked  and  low-grade  lines  have  everywhere  been 
built  around  congested  terminals.  The  big  "  Tren- 
ton cut-off,"  branching  from  the  main  line  at 
Trenton  with  a  double,  low-grade  track,  strikes 
westward,  leaving  Philadelphia  out  of  its  course. 
Twenty-five  miles  west  of  Philadelphia  it  unites 
again,  like  a  traffic  river,  with  the  main  line.  Again 
and  again  this  is  done ;  at  Pittsburg,  at  Altoona, 
these  lines  are  skilfully  run  completely  around 
overloaded  yards.  Opposite  Harrisburg  the  west 
bank  of  the  Susquehanna  has  been  pre-empted,  and 
a  new  Pennsylvania  road  is  being  built  with  a 
double-track  stone-arch  bridge,  all  its  own,  near 
Columbia;  and  from  the  crest  of  the  Alleghanies 
it  will  soon  be  possible  for  the  Pennsylvania  Com- 
pany to  send  freight  to  tide-water  against  grades  no- 
where heavier  than  sixteen  feet  to  the  mile.  Near 
Harrisburg,  Pennsylvania  engineering  has  built 
to  itself  a  monument  that  will  last  with  the  monu- 

39 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

ments  of  time.  At  Rockville,  just  above  the  capi- 
tal city,  they  have  thrown  across  the  Susquehanna 
a  four-track  bridge  of  monolithic  stone  seven- 
eighths  of  a  mile  long  and  stepped  in  graceful 
arches  as  enduring  as  the  mountains  that  look 
down  on  the  beautiful  river.  Bridges,  like  men, 
have  their  tables  of  mortality ;  but  in  the  expect- 
ancy of  life  accorded  to  American  bridges  here  is 
a  structure  to  which  no  limit  of  years  may  be 
assigned ;  it  has  been  built  to  last  forever. 

At  Petersburg,  up  the  blue  Juniata,  the  line 
forks  again,  and  a  new  double-track  road  has  been 
built  along  the  route  of  the  early  State  public 
works.  It  follows  the  old  canal  to  Hollidaysburg 
and  the  "  Portage  "  railroad  up  the  eastern  slope 
of  the  Alleghanies,  flowing,  so  to  say,  into  the 
main  line  again  at  Gallitzin,  where  a  group  of 
double-track  and  single-track  tunnels  take  the 
lines  across  the  Alleghany  divide. 

From  Gallitzin  to  Pittsburg,  down  the  west 
slope  of  the  Alleghanies,  the  original  location  was 
considered  bold,  but  the  four-tracking  has  involved 
work  that  is  gigantic.  Where  the  Conemaugh 
River  bursts  through  Chestnut  Ridge  it  has  cut 
an  exquisite  defile  known  as  the  Packsaddle. 
Narrow  and  forbidding  to  the  construction  en- 
gineer, the  Packsaddle  stands  like  a  defiance  flung 
by  the  mountains.  Here  the  Pennsylvania  con- 

40 


The  Pennsylvania  System 

tractors  have  gone  in  with  drills  and  giant  pow- 
der, and  with  thousands  of  men  they  have  liter- 
ally torn  from  the  cheek  of  the  mountain  a  shelf 
wide  enough  to  carry  two  new  running  tracks. 
Before  entering  Packsaddle,  at  Bolivar,  the  lines 
fork,  the  low-grade  "  West  Pennsylvania  "  tracks 
following  the  river  through  Packsaddle  to  Pitts- 
burg,  while  the  main  line,  with  its  four  tracks, 
rises  through  Packsaddle  and,  running  across 
country,  strikes  the  Monongahela  River  near 
Braddock's  Fields.  The  traveller  then  realizes 
what  the  Pennsylvania  and  its  engineers  have 
accomplished.  Where  nature  conflicts  with  the 
railroad  operations  it  has  been  conquered;  yet, 
while  riding  upon  a  road  without  a  superior  in 
any  country,  the  most  inspiring  scenery  surrounds 
him. 

However,  unparalleled  engineering  feats  are 
not  the  greatest  chapter  in  present-day  Pennsyl- 
vania management.  When  Mr.  Cassatt  assumed 
executive  control  of  the  Pennsylvania  System,  he 
found  freight  rates  from  end  to  end  of  the  United 
States  steeped  in  discrimination.  By  traffic  man- 
agers the  last  pretence  of  justice  in  the  sale  of 
freight  transportation  had  been  abandoned,  and  Mr. 
Cassatt,  coming  in  as  President  of  the  Pennsylvania, 
found  railroads  under  the  club  of  the  big  shippers. 
The  instrument  of  this  rate  discrimination  has 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

always  been  the  secret  rebate :  the  upbuilding  of 
one  shipper's  fortunes  at  the  expense  of  another, 
the  curse  of  traffic  management,  and  the  most  try- 
ing problem  in  railroad  affairs.  It  has  been 
preached  upon,  inveighed  against,  and  legislated 
against,  all  quite  in  vain.  Like  the  robber  baron 
of  the  Rhine,  the  American  industrial  baron  has 
long  laid  under  tribute  the  transportation  lines  of 
America;  the  big  buyer  of  transportation  has 
taken  the  American  road  by  the  throat  and  forced 
it  to  deliver.  To  make  the  situation  more  cheer- 
ful, the  railroad  has  been  held  by  orators  and  jurists 
as  responsible  for  the  demoralized  situation  and 
for  the  upbuilding  of  trusts  and  monopolies. 

Though  railroads  have  been  parties  to  secret 
rebates,  it  would  be  difficult  to  show  that  they 
have  always  been  willing  parties.  Escape  from  a 
situation  confessedly  intolerable  had  been  sought 
for  years;  but  escape  seemed  impossible.  The 
big  shipper  dictated  his  terms,  and  the  small  ship- 
per and  the  railroad  paid  the  bills.  Congress 
passed  laws  of  no  avail.  The  courts  of  the 
United  States  had  been  repeatedly  appealed  to, 
but  while  conditions  grew  steadily  worse  they  sat 
with  folded  arms  behind  the  broad  conclusion 
that  transportation  was  a  private  commodity  which 
might  be  sold  to  one  man  at  one  price  and  to  his 
neighbor  at  another  price. 

42 


The  Pennsylvania  System 

It  has  been  denied  that  such  is  the  case,  but 
there  are  facts  that  put  clearly  on  record  the  atti- 
tude of  American  courts  during  this  period  of 
transportation  anarchism.  In  1879  Mr.  Cassatt, 
then  vice-president  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
in  charge  of  traffic,  testified  in  the  equity  suits 
brought  by  the  Commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania, 
known  as  the  Standard  Oil  Inquiries.  He  told 
the  court  without  evasion  or  reservation  the  exact 
relations  between  the  Standard  Oil  Company  and 
the  Pennsylvania  Road,  and  his  testimony  thus 
became  an  official  record,  subject  to  the  use  of 
every  Pennsylvania  shipper  who  might  seek  in 
court  to  recover  excessive  freight  charges  made 
upon  his  particular  shipments.  Must  it  not  be 
inferred  that  if  the  attitude  of  American  courts 
promised  relief  to  the  small  shipper  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Road,  with  Mr.  Cassatt's  testimony  on 
record,  would  have  been  deluged  with  suits  to 
recover  excessive  charges?  But  were  any  such 
suits  brought*?  Not  one.  Counsel  understood 
too  well  the  hopelessness  in  that  day  of  a  legal 
appeal  to  advise  any  client  to  proceed  against  a 
railroad  on  the  ground  of  unjust  discrimination. 

Twenty  years  later  Mr.  Cassatt,  drawn  against 
his  strong  personal  inclination  out  of  his  retire- 
ment, was  elected  to  the  presidency  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania Railroad  System ;  but  whoever  else  had 

43 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

forgotten  Standard  Oil  and  1879,  Mr.  Cassatt 
had  not  forgotten.  He  determined  that  rate  dis- 
crimination in  the  United  States,  the  impover- 
ishment of  the  investor,  the  ruin  of  the  honest 
shipper,  and  the  cause  of  so  many  railroad  receiv- 
erships should  cease,  and  to  the  task  of  putting  it 
down  he  and  his  associates  addressed  themselves ; 
and  after  public  prints  and  public  speakers  had 
shouted  themselves  hoarse ;  after  Congress  had 
failed  in  solving  the  problem,  as  it  has  always 
failed ;  after  the  courts  of  the  United  States  had 
failed,  as  they  have  always  failed,  this  railroad 
man  and  his  associates  took  the  abuse  in  hand 
and  stamped  it  out  of  American  railroading. 

It  was  the  community  of  interest  plan  evolved 
by  Mr.  Cassatt  that  did  away  with  secret  freight 
rates  and  rebates.  To  accomplish  this,  the  Penn- 
sylvania, acting  with  other  heavy  owners  in  the 
railroad  field,  acquired  large  interests  in  the  weaker 
roads,  until,  with  co-operation,  courage,  and  pa- 
tience the  trunk  lines,  one  and  all,  were  brought 
into  a  phalanx  against  the  common  enemy. 

This  is  the  record  of  Alexander  J.  Cassatt. 
He  has  made  unjust  discrimination  in  railroad 
traffic  a  thing  of  the  past.  He,  largely,  has  made 
it  possible  for  the  public  freight  rate  to  stalk 
abroad  day  or  night,  unarmed  anywhere  in  the 
United  States.  The  traditional  Captain  of  In- 

44 


The  Pennsylvania  System 

dustry  to-day  that  should  attempt  to  dictate  terms 
to  a  trunk-line  manager  would  be  laughed  out  of 
the  traffic  offices.  Mr.  Cassatt  has  fought  the 
fight  of  the  courts,  of  Congress,  of  the  small  ship- 
per, and  of  common  honesty  until  it  has  become 
possible  for  an  American  to  ship  a  single  carload 
of  freight  as  cheaply  as  a  trust  can  ship  a  thou- 
sand; and  when  the  accounts  in  American  rail- 
road history  are  made  up  this  fact  cannot  be 
overlooked,  distorted,  or  forgotten. 

Out  of  a  rate  situation  so  disastrous  and  forbid- 
ding, it  will  hardly  be  believed  that  any  good 
could  have  come,  yet  one  signal  good  has  come. 
In  reducing  the  income  of  American  roads,  low 
rates  have  forced  operating  departments  to  ex- 
haust their  ingenuity  in  railroad  economies. 
With  the  income  painfully  curtailed,  every  con- 
ceivable retrenchment  has  been  found  necessary 
until  saving  has  become  in  American  railroading 
a  science.  In  operation  it  has  put  the  American 
road  ahead  of  all  others  in  the  world,  although  a 
comparison  with  English  roads  will  show  that 
everything  the  American  road  buys  costs  more 
than  the  English  road  pays.  A  single  exception 
may  be  thought  to  occur  in  the  matter  of  coal. 
Undoubtedly  the  Pennsylvania  Road  has  cheaper 
coal  than  its  English  cousins,  but  the  American 
roads,  as  a  whole,  have  coal  as  high  in  cost  as  the 

45 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

British.  To  reflect  that  our  grain  to-day  is  moved 
at  a  rate  of  two  and  a  half  mills  per  ton-mile,  that 
a  ton  is  hauled  forty  miles  for  ten  cents,  is  to 
force  the  conviction  that  traffic-rate  demoraliza- 
tion has  after  all  brought  some  compensation. 
Without  this  experience  American  roads  might 
to-day  be  on  a  level  in  operative  cost  with  Eng- 
lish roads,  doing  a  much  smaller  business  and  not 
affording  our  country  that  industrial  advance  to 
which  low  rates  have  contributed  so  much. 


THE  HARRIMAN  LINES 


WA  S  H  IN  GIT  0  N  *C" 

ON 

/ 


""*  *  >\.— ...     .-x^"      VelLLOwiroH  i 

NlATION  AL 


THK    II A 


I  D      A 

r 


T      A 


j 


S      0 


D      A      K 


N    G 


NEBRASKA 


<r     I      0      W     A 


>  COUNCIL  BLUFFS 


WORTH 


M  EX  I  C  0 


LINES. 


THE   HARRIMAN   LINES 

IN  the  years  of  his  reign  Edward  H.  Harri* 
man  is  youngest  among  American  masters  of 
transportation.  It  is  scarcely  more  than  six  years 
— February  l,  1898 — since  the  reorganization  of 
the  Union  Pacific  was  completed  and  Mr.  Harri- 
man  and  his  friends  took  final  and  formal  posses- 
sion of  it.  Within  that  time  he  has  risen  to  the 
very  first  rank  of  the  powers  in  American  rail- 
roading. 

What,  however,  is  of  more  vital  matter,  the 
record  is  that  Harriman  railroading  has  been  uni- 
formly good  railroading.  It  will  be  difficult  to 
point  a  case  in  which,  in  Mr.  Harriman's  hands,  a 
railroad  or  its  public  has  suffered  hardship,  and 
the  instances  are  marked  in  which  the  immediate 
benefits  of  his  control  have  been,  to  both,  enor- 
mous. 

It  is  not,  then,  merely  that  Mr.  Harriman  is 
the  owner  of  seventeen  thousand  miles  of  rail- 
road ;  it  is,  rather,  because  every  mile  of  road  he 
owns  stands  for  good  railroading,  that  he  is  worth 
estimating.  He  took  over  the  Alton  when  it 
had  aged  like  a  puff-ball  and  was  ready  to  dis- 

49 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

solve  into  dust.  For  years  it  had  been  famed  as 
an  earner,  and  where  seven  and  eight  per  cent, 
dividends  were  treasured  as  an  annual  return 
Alton  stock  was  ranked  with  things  celestial. 
Unfortunately  these  really  unusual  distributions 
were  effected  by  indefensible  economies.  Rail- 
roading should  occupy  at  least  as  high  an  indus- 
trial a  plane  as  farming,  and  a  farmer  that  should 
strip  his  land  yearly  of  its  total  produce  and  give 
nothing  back  to  the  soil  would  hardly  rank  as  a 
thrifty  husbandman.  Good  farmers  keep  up  their 
machinery,  buildings,  and  fences;  they  fertilize 
occasionally;  but  the  Alton  fertilizing  was  put 
wholly  into  dividends,  and  Mr.  Harriman  bought 
a  road  that  had  not  alone  let  bridges,  tracks,  and 
rolling  stock  run  down,  but  had  sold  even  terminal 
rights,  while  distributing  eight  per  cent,  to  stock- 
holders. Without  delay  or  hesitation  he  set  about 
making  of  the  Alton  the  best  possible  road  of  its 
class,  and  its  class  is  the  first.  He  has  overhauled 
the  system  completely,  and  put  it  physically  a 
little  in  advance  of  every  competitor.  To  instance : 
For  thirty  years  the  Alton  had  been  strong  in  a 
territory  possessing  the  richest  coal  deposits  in 
Illinois,  and  not  until  the  Harriman  forces  took 
hold  of  the  road  had  it  ever  developed  a  coal 
business.  Not  only  has  the  new  Alton  been 
equipped  with  what  it  never  before  had,  cars  and 

50 


The  Harriman   Lines 

motive  power  to  handle  this  traffic,  but  its  engi- 
neers in  rebuilding  the  line  show  the  lowest 
maximum  grades  from  the  Illinois  coal  fields 
into  Chicago.  Beginning  with  nothing,  the  new 
owners  have  within  five  years  developed  a  coal 
traffic  that  already  ranks  second  in  volume  among 
the  soft-coal  roads  of  its  territory. 

While,  in  a  legal  sense,  a  railroad  may  be 
quite  within  its  rights  in  declining  to  provide  for 
the  handling  of  such  traffic,  deeming  it  of  small 
profit,  and  may  legally  decline  to  expend  earn- 
ings in  reducing  grades  and  maintaining  right  of 
way — in  a  word,  in  improving  its  facilities  for  do- 
ing business — the  public  dependent  on  such  a  road 
for  transportation  will  feel,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
that  they  are  entitled  to  industrial  opportunities 
as  good  as  those  enjoyed  by  more  fortunate 
neighbors :  that  their  railroad  should  be  kept  in 
the  front  rank  just  as  their  homes  and  streets  and 
farms  are  kept ;  and  the  attitude  has  a  show 
of  reasonableness.  These  are  points  which  the 
new  policy  of  the  Alton  has  sought  to  meet,  and 
that  its  local  public  appreciates  the  effort  is 
shown  by  the  steady  development  of  industries  of 
every  sort  along  its  line.  Out  of  a  very  heavy 
passenger  traffic  on  the  Alton  ninety  per  cent, 
originates  in  its  local  territory.  Under  Harriman 
management  bridges  have  been  eliminated,  curves 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

cut  out,  heavy  steel  rails  laid,  new  car  equipment 
provided,  and  motive  power  has  been  made  to 
conform  to  the  highest  standard.  Mr.  Harriman 
has  made  of  the  Alton  practically  a  speeding 
track  across  Illinois  and  Missouri,  and  some  con- 
ception of  the  undertaking  may  be  had  when  the 
fact  is  stated  that  to  do  this  has  cost  him  $  1 9,000 
a  mile — more  money,  mile  for  mile,  than  has  gone 
into  improvements  on  any  other  portion  of  his 
railroad  holdings.  What  this  means  to  that  pub- 
lic which  must  depend  on  the  Alton  for  its  rail- 
road facilities  is  a  part  of  the  Harriman  railroad 
record.  Alton  shippers  can  get  rates  that  put  their 
products  on  an  equal  basis  in  competitive  markets 
because  the  road  can  do  business  against  all  comers. 

But  Mr.  Harriman  controls  also  the  Union 
Pacific  and  its  tremendously  powerful  California 
ally,  the  Southern  Pacific,  as  well  as  the  Alton 
and  the  Kansas  City  Southern.  Whenever  freight 
is  to  be  moved  to  or  from  the  Pacific  Coast,  Har- 
riman lines,  from  their  long  intrenchment  and 
their  vigorous  condition,  are  first  among  those  to 
be  reckoned  with ;  and  in  the  big  system  that  Mr. 
Harriman  has  built  up  they  all  group  strategi- 
cally around  that  road  the  very  name  of  which, 
in  the  story  of  the  American  railroad,  is  a  name 
to  eronjure  with — the  Union  Pacific. 

Of  all  American  roads  the  Union  Pacific  has 
52 


The  Harriman  Lines 

traditions  the  most  spectacular.  Its  undertaking 
involved  the  daring  of  visionary  men.  The  con- 
ception of  such  a  road  was  among  the  earliest  of 
American  dreams,  and  while  its  working  out  was 
a  national  pride  it  became  also  a  national  scandal. 

For  nearly  thirty  years  after  being  completed 
the  Union  Pacific  was  operated  with  varying  for- 
tunes. In  that  sensational  period  it  had  shown 
great  earning  power  but  had  been  at  times  badly 
managed.  It  had  played  a  part  never  to  be  for- 
gotten in  the  development  of  the  West ;  but  its 
strength  was  bowed  under  an  insupportable  bur- 
den of  Government  debt  and  Government  domi- 
nation, and  the  sins  of  its  builders  were  visited 
a  thousandfold  upon  its  hapless  head.  It  had 
opened  to  settlers  vast  regions  of  fertile  country 
and  brought  a  new  world  into  touch  with  metro- 
politan centres  and  markets.  In  every  section 
traversed  by  this  earliest  transcontinental  line 
cities  and  towns  had  sprung  up  and  prospered, 
and  prosper  to-day.  The  Union  Pacific  was  the 
West  of  our  pioneer  generation,  and  neither  the 
misfortunes  of  the  one  nor  the  triumphs  of  the 
other  can  ever  be  divorced ;  indeed,  the  industrial 
and  intellectual  prosperity  of  the  West  is  bound 
up  in  the  story  of  the  Union  Pacific. 

Taking  the  historical  trail  of  the  explorer,  the 
adventurer,  and  the  Mormon  of  the  early  day,  the 

53 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

road  followed  the  valley  of  the  Platte,  then  a 
sandy  waste  and  now  an  irrigated  garden,  far 
beyond  the  hundredth  meridian,  and  pre-empted 
a  railroad  territory  that  under  supportable  con- 
ditions would  have  given  it  a  position  at  all  times 
impregnable.  But  its  changing  owners,  busied 
with  secondary  schemes,  allowed  valuable  local 
territory  to  be  filched  from  it  by  the  Burlington 
and  the  Northwestern,  leaving  the  Union  Pacific 
to  stretch  its  way  from  the  Missouri  without  one 
good  feeder  where  it  might  have  had  a  dozen. 
With  these  changing  fortunes,  the  Southern 
Pacific,  California  ally  of  the  Union  Pacific  and 
its  sole  outlit  to  the  coast — its  absolute  depend- 
ence for  through  traffic — became  gradually  a 
covert  enemy,  and  building  its  own  lines  to  the 
South,  diverted  traffic  as  much  as  possible  from 
the  patient  Overland  route.  Left  thus  to  the 
barest  of  its  own  resources,  strong  in  its  geograph- 
ical position  and  weak  in  every  support  that  a 
railroad  ought  to  count  as  strength,  the  Union 
Pacific  struggled  on  until  1893,  anc^  a  receiver- 
ship closed  its  first  chapter.  It  was  a  strange 
chapter;  nothing  quite  like  it  in  all  other  Ameri- 
can railroading.  But  it  is  closed,  and  the  men 
who,  leading  forlorn  hopes,  threw  their  fortunes, 
their  health,  their  reputations  into  that  thirty  years' 
struggle  will  never  be  forgotten.  Monuments  to 

54 


The  Harriman  Lines 

their  heroic  enterprise  dot  the  country  between 
the  sands  of  the  Missouri  and  the  coast  of  the 
Pacific.  They  laid  the  foundations  of  a  com- 
monwealth in  a  wilderness. 

Perhaps  the  time  had  never  come  in  all  that 
period  when  it  was  possible  to  raise  this  prostrate 
Western  giant  to  its  place  among  American  rail- 
roads. Many  men  had  contemplated  it;  great 
men  had  at  times  had  the  road's  management. 
Possibly,  one  and  all,  they  shrunk  from  the  hercu- 
lean task  of  acquiring  the  Southern  Pacific  in 
order  that  their  property  should  not  be  hung  up 
with  a  Western  terminus  in  the  Utah  desert ;  of  a 
final  adjustment  of  the  Government  debt;  and  of 
the  rebuilding  of  the  great  road  across  the  Rocky 
Mountains.  At  all  events,  in  all  of  those  thirty 
years  no  sufficient  capitalist,  no  aggressive  rail- 
road owner  did  grapple  with  the  difficulties  until 
Mr.  Harriman,  almost  yesterday,  laid  his  hands 
upon  this  tremendous  property  and  made  it  the 
Prussia  of  his  railroad  empire. 

The  Union  Pacific  had  at  the  time  sounded 
the  depths  of  a  financial  crisis.  For  five  years  it 
had  been  in  the  hands  of  receivers.  A  lack  of 
funds  had  cramped  its  natural  effectiveness,  and 
courts  had  divided  its  garments  among  warring 
creditors  until  it  was  reduced  to  the  plight  of  a 
strong  man  stripped  of  everything. 

55 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

The  country,  by  an  unfortunate  coincidence, 
was  in  a  condition  almost  as  deplorable.  Its  in- 
dustries lay  prostrate  under  the  effects  of  the  most 
far-reaching  panic  since  1873.  Not  al°ne  was 
the  monetary  stringency  acute ;  for  the  first  time 
since  the  Chicago  Haymarket  riots  men  had 
begun  seriously  to  estimate  the  symptoms  of  dis- 
content among  that  class  of  our  people  most  sus- 
ceptible to  the  influence  of  industrial  agitators. 
In  the  railroad  world  troops  had  been  called  out 
to  curb  the  violence  of  mobs ;  in  the  political 
world  new  counsellors  had  arisen  with  doctrines  so 
sudden  and  audacious  that  business  men  stood 
confounded.  A  great  political  party  had  sur- 
rendered completely  to  a  leader  who,  with  some 
fantastic  show  of  success,  urged  his  own  candidacy 
for  the  Presidency  of  the  United  States  on  the 
strength  of  his  explicit  pledge  that  if  elected  he 
would  do  his  utmost  to  debase  the  national  cur- 
rency. With  apprehension  the  keynote  in  finan- 
cial circles,  business  everywhere  in  paralysis, 
capital  hiding  in  secret  places,  cash  hoarded  in 
safe-deposit  vaults,  and  gold  already  at  a  colorable 
premium,  Edward  H.  Harriman  planned  and  laid 
the  foundations  for  a  movement  that  was  almost 
at  once  to  elevate  him  to  a  first  place  in  the  rail- 
road world. 

To  reflect  that  this  has  all  taken  place  within 

56 


The  Harriman  Lines 

ten  years  is  to  cast  upon  it  the  shadow  of  in- 
credibility. When  the  hour  for  such  an  under- 
taking was  ripe  Mr.  Harriman  had  to  look  but 
five  years  ahead  for  justification  of  his  venture. 
It  is  a  commonplace  that  times  of  depression  are 
the  times  to  buy  as  those  of  prosperity  are  the 
•times  to  sell.  What  men  lack  when  the  outlook 
is  gloomy  is  the  courage  to  make  their  convic- 
tions operative.  It  is  not  that  other  men  do  not 
realize  such  opportunities  or  that  they  do  not 
see  during  periods  of  prosperity  the  coming  of 
that  inevitable  day  when,  through  monetary  stress, 
good  properties  may  be  had  for  little  price ;  the 
difficulty  is  when  the  day  comes  that  out  of  one 
thousand  men  who  have  foreseen  it  but  one  has 
the  decision  to  back  his  judgment.  Mr.  Harri- 
man possessed  the  decision;  that  is  why  to-day, 
under  brighter  skies  than  those  of  1896,  other 
men  are  reading  about  Mr.  Harriman's  achieve- 
ments instead  of  Mr.  Harriman  reading  about 
theirs. 

Courageous  as  the  idea  was  in  its  conception 
and  execution,  when  the  enormous  means  neces- 
sary for  buying  had  been  provided  Mr.  Harri- 
man's work  had  but  begun.  He  was  possessed 
of  a  group  of  exceedingly  valuable  properties, 
but  all  of  them  stood  in  urgent  need  of  rehabilita- 
tion. He  had  in  the  Pacific  roads  and  the  Alton 

57 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

the  corporate  titles,  the  rights  of  way,  and  the 
opportunities;  such  incidental  acquirements  as 
rails,  bridges,  and  rolling  stock  could  not  seriously 
be  counted  into  the  bargain,  for  they  had  seen 
their  day.  It  remained  to  transfer  them  quietly 
but  firmly  to  the  railroad  back  yard  and  cheer- 
fully to  start  anew.  Moreover,  in  railroad  prac- 
tice new  standards  of  track  grades  and  curvature 
had  been  set,  which  must  be  met  in  order  to 
compete  with  the  best  roads,  and  those  exacting 
standards  were  uncommonly  expensive.  Again, 
in  a  crisis  equally  vital,  Mr.  Harriman  showed 
the  stuff  of  the  unusual  man.  He  decided  that 
his  roads  must  be  made  good  roads,  the  best  of 
their  kind,  and  for  this  purpose  he  made  figures. 
Not  all  of  them  can  be  considered  here,  but  one 
most  interesting  estimate  was  this : 

"  For  my  immediate  necessities  (so  to  say)  in 
railroad  rebuilding :  One  hundred  millions  of 
dollars." 

This,  I  take  it,  above  all  else  in  the  record  of 
his  railroad  operations  gives  the  man  his  rank 
among  really  great  railroad  men — the  Vander- 
bilts,  A.  J.  Cassatt,  James  J.  Hill,  Huntington, 
Garrett,  Thomas  A.  Scott,  and  the  Goulds.  It 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  other  able  managers 
and  operators  have  at  different  times  controlled  or 
owned  the  Union  Pacific.  Mr.  Harriman  was 

58 


The  Harriman   Lines 

the  first  to  make  of  it  a  road  of  the  highest  rank 
physically — a  power  in  the  transportation  world 
worthy  of  standing,  conditions  allowed  for,  with 
the  New  York  Central  lines  or  the  Pennsylvania 
lines. 

He  needed,  for  his  immense  work  of  making 
over  these  many  thousand  miles  of  railroads,  con- 
structionists  of  the  highest  order,  and  these,  also, 
he  gathered  about  him.  The  Alton  he  gave  to 
S.  M.  Felton,  the  Union  Pacific  he  gave  to 
Horace  G.  Burt,  the  Southern  Pacific  to  Julius 
Kruttschnitt,  and  the  Kansas  City  Southern  to 
S.  R.  Knott.  It  will  be  observed  that  all  of  these 
men  are  able  constructionists,  not  only  presidents 
or  vice-presidents  in  the  sense  of  being  strong 
executive  officers,  but  highly  trained  engineers, 
capable  of  doing  themselves  anything  they  may 
order  done.  They,  in  turn,  chose  the  most  capable 
men  they  could  find  as  chief  engineers  of  their 
various  lines  to  carry  out  the  Harriman  plans — 
Baldwin  of  the  Alton,  Hood  of  the  Southern 
Pacific,  Berry  of  the  Union  Pacific :  all  men  that 
rank,  among  men  as  strong  as  American  engineers 
are  admitted  to  be,  as  exceptional — and  with  the 
money  ready  each  man  set  about  his  work  to 
make  practically  new  railroads  of  the  Harriman 
group. 

Horace  G.  Burt,  then  president  of  the  Union 
59 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Pacific,  had  already  left  his  impress  as  an  engi- 
neer on  the  Chicago  and  Northwestern  Road.  On 
him  fell  the  consideration  of  the  enormous  engi- 
neering difficulties  involved  in  crossing  the  Rocky 
Mountain  divide.  To  him  must  be  given  credit 
for  the  boldness  of  conception  which  marks  the 
extraordinary  improvements  on  the  new  line,  and 
it  was  his  task  to  convince  the  new  owners  of  the 
wisdom  of  so  heavy  an  outlay.  Under  his  active 
direction  contractors  raised  an  army  of  laborers  to 
subdue  the  mountains  and  assembled  an  equip- 
ment of  modern  machinery  much  of  which  was 
then  used  for  the  first  time  in  railroad  building. 
Under  Burt  these  Western  men  completed  in  less 
than  two  years  the  work  of  five,  and  every  day 
the  heavy  traffic  flowed  without  interruption  over 
the  line  they  were  rebuilding. 

It  is  not,  perhaps,  commonly  understood  that  the 
highest  barrier  presented  to  the  Union  Pacific  in 
its  transcontinental  run  lies  immediately  west  of 
the  plains  about  Cheyenne,  where  the  line  strikes 
that  secondary  range  of  the  Rockies  known  as  the 
Black  Hills.  What  makes  the  ascent  of  these  hills 
of  especial  difficulty  is  a  great  elevation  coupled 
with  unusually  short  slopes.  Just  here,  at  the  out- 
set almost,  the  Union  Pacific  rises  to  its  greatest 
height  above  the  sea,  and  here,  in  the  rebuilding, 
lay  the  problem  before  Berry,  chief  engineer,  as 

60 


The  Harriman  Lines 

to  how  the  grade  of  this  granite  summit  might 
possibly  be  reduced.  New  limits  had  been  set  to 
the  gradients  of  the  proposed  improvements;  but 
it  is  one  thing  in  a  directors'  meeting  to  adopt  a 
grade  over  the  Rockies  of  forty-three  feet  to  the 
mile  and  quite  another  to  go  into  the  Rockies 
and  run  it.  The  chief  engineer  had  to  match  his 
wits  against  those  of  engineers  who,  a  generation 
earlier,  had  laid  out  the  pioneer  line  and  done 
their  work  well ;  thirty-five  years  of  reflection, 
observation,  and  criticism  from  the  best  construc- 
tionists  in  the  world  have  failed  to  develop  flaws 
in  this  earliest  effort  of  Americans  at  bridging  the 
Rockies.  The  Rocky  Mountain  engineer  of 
that  day  had  command  of  practically  all  of  the 
advantages  that  those  of  to-day  have,  save  only 
access  to  Mr.  Harriman's  pin-money;  even  then 
the  difficulties  of  getting  a  better  grade  than  the 
first  one  across  the  hills  proved  enormous.  To 
find  the  line  that  Berry  determined  he  must 
have,  he  sent  good  men  into  the  hills  only  to  be 
told  on  their  return  that  where  he  wanted  a  line 
there  was  none.  But  when  they  tried  to  main- 
tain this,  the  personal  equation,  that  subtle  and 
incalculable  factor  in  men  which  in  the  overcom- 
ing of  difficulties  makes  the  slight  difference  be- 
tween success  and  failure,  intervened.  The  chief 
engineer,  undaunted,  refused  to  abide  by  the 

61 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

findings.  He  sent  the  engineers  again ;  the  sec- 
ond time  they  brought  the  line  he  knew  must  be 
there. 

It  involved  staggering  estimates.  The  Dale 
Creek  crossing,  just  beyond  Cheyenne,  called  for 
a  single  fill  nine  hundred  feet  long  and  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty  feet  deep.  In  these  granite  wastes 
the  engineering  figures  assumed,  at  once,  unheard- 
of  proportions.  Cubic  yards  went  into  the  calcu- 
lations in  millions  instead  of  thousands.  Two 
creek  crossings  called  for  eight  hundred  thousand 
yards  of  embankment.  Two  miles  of  new  line 
required  the  moving  of  seventeen  hundred  thou- 
sand yards  of  material,  and  of  this  three  hundred 
thousand  were  of  solid  rock.  Two  fills  within 
these  two  miles  swallowed  a  million  cubic  yards. 
To  eliminate  three  heavy  reverse  curves  and  two 
bridges  a  summit  cut  was  required,  eighty  feet 
deep  and  a  thousand  feet  long.  The  springing 
charge  for  a  single  cone  of  rock  was  a  thousand 
pounds  of  giant  powder,  and  the  mountain  was 
hurled  into  the  canon  with  twenty  thousand 
pounds  of  black.  For  these  unprecedented  level- 
lings  of  the  continental  summit  new  devices  were 
constantly  brought  into  play.  Time  was  an  es- 
sence of  the  undertaking,  and  the  American  con- 
tractor, following  loyally  the  American  engineer, 
as  he  has  always  followed  him,  stooped  like  an 

62 


The  Harriman   Lines 

Atlas  and  took  upon  his  shoulders  the  burden  of 
the  plans. 

Grading  machines  and  dump  wagons  were  sent 
into  the  hills  in  trainloads.  Steam  shovels,  the 
leviathans  of  the  railroad  camp,  crossed  the  moun- 
tains in  processions.  They  scooped  the  borrow 
pits,  cut  the  shale  from  the  tunnels,  dug  the  Sher- 
man ballast,  and  loaded  even  blasted  granite  upon 
cars  out  of  the  rock  cuts.  Track-laying  machines 
flung  out  rails  on  one  side  and  ties  on  the  other 
like  sandwiches.  At  one  of  the  vital  points,  Chi- 
cago men,  the  MacArthurs,  took  the  heavy  work, 
and  to  make  a  three-hundred-thousand-yard  fill 
with  an  embankment  of  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
eight  feet,  Mac  Arthur,  to  complete  his  contract 
on  time,  threw  his  own  temporary  suspension 
bridge  across  the  thousand-foot  canon  and  ran  his 
dump  cars  out  upon  his  own  rails  and  cables. 
Track  laying,  ballasting  even,  was  pushed  across 
the  Rockies  in  midwinter.  At  the  new  summit 
the  last  hill  was  drilled  and  a  tunnel  eighteen 
hundred  feet  long  put  through  primitive  granite. 
Here  the  Harriman  engineers  scaled  two  hundred 
and  forty-seven  feet  off  the  highest  elevation  at 
which  the  road  had  formerly  crossed  the  conti- 
nent ;  then  came  their  task  of  getting  gracefully 
down  the  western  slope  of  the  hills  to  the  Laramie 
plains. 

63 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

There  is  nothing  less  showy  in  the  rebuilding 
of  the  Harriman  lines  and  nothing  that  is  more 
of  a  triumph  than  this  feat  of  Berry's  in  getting 
into  Laramie.  He  has  used  here  every  trick  in 
his  bag,  and  after  moving  five  millions  of  cubic 
yards  of  earth  and  rock  to  accomplish  his  purpose 
he  comes  down  into  Laramie  with  a  forty-three- 
foot  maximum  grade  eighteen  miles  long.  So 
close  is  the  cloth  cut  for  this  entire  distance  that 
not  one  rail-length  of  level  track  could  be  con- 
ceded for  stations ;  they  take  their  chances  on  the 
grade  as  best  they  can.  Providence  may,  indeed, 
some  time  shift  the  axis  of  the  granite  anticlinal 
now  so  skilfully  crossed  at  Sherman,  Wyoming, 
and  new  dispositions  may  be  called  for;  but  until 
such  an  upheaval  takes  place  Berry's  Laramie 
grade  is  likely  to  stand. 

The  whole  road  from  this  eastern  approach  to 
the  Black  Hills,  far  out  to  Medicine  Bow  on  the 
Laramie  plains,  shows  everywhere  the  chisel  and 
the  straight-edge  of  the  Harriman  engineers. 

There  are  but  two  pieces  of  track,  both  very 
short,  on  the  entire  main  line  where  the  forty- 
three-foot  grade  is  exceeded.  Curvature  has  had 
to  go  with  the  heavy  grades,  and  between  the 
Black  Hills  and  the  Wasatch  Range  seven  thou- 
sand degrees  within  the  last  five  years  have  grad- 
ually disappeared.  At  one  point  the  new  line 

64 


The  Harriman  Lines 

within  a  distance  of  four  miles  crosses  the  old  one 
seven  times;  the  Hanna  cut  uncovered  an  eight- 
foot  seam  of  coal;  a  Green  River  cut  revealed 
wide  deposits  of  petrified  fish. 

First  and  last  the  contractors  uncovered  a  little 
of  everything  in  the  Rockies,  from  oil  pockets  to 
underground  rivers,  but  in  the  Wasatch  Range, 
in  boring  a  six-thousand-foot  tunnel,  they  struck 
a  mountain  that  for  startling  developments  broke 
the  records  in  the  annals  of  American  engineering. 
It  was  here  that  the  underground  stream  was  en- 
countered, but  this  was  a  mere  incident  among 
the  possibilities  in  the  mountain.  The  formation 
is  carboniferous,  thrown  up  in  the  Aspen  Ridge 
at  an  angle  of  twenty-five  degrees,  and  it  includes 
shale,  sandstones,  oil,  and  coal.  To  bore  a  hole 
through  the  mountain  at  a  depth  of  four  hundred 
and  fifty  feet  from  the  highest  point  was  not  diffi- 
cult; but  the  curious  thing  was  that,  after  being 
bored,  the  hole  would  not  stay  straight.  The 
mountain,  reversing  every  metaphor  and  simile 
of  stability,  refused  to  remain  in  the  same  position 
for  two  days  together.  It  moved  forcibly  into 
the  bore  from  the  right  side,  and  when  remon- 
strated with  stole  quietly  in  from  the  left;  it  de- 
scended on  the  tunnel  with  crushing  force  from 
above  and  rose  irresistibly  up  into  it  from  below. 
The  mountain  moved  from  every  quarter  of  the 

65 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

compass  and  from  quarters  hardly  covered  by  the 
compass.  Workmen  grew  superstitious,  contract- 
ors suffered  chills,  and  engineers  stood  nonplussed. 
Starting  in  huge  cleavage  planes,  the  shale  became 
at  times  absolutely  uncontrollable.  Wall  plates 
well  fastened  into  regular  alignment  at  night 
looked  in  the  morning  as  if  giants  had  twisted 
them ;  12x12  hard-pine  timbers  laid  skin  to  skin 
in  the  tunnel  were  snapped  like  matches  by  this 
mysterious  pressure.  Engineers  are  on  record  as 
stating  that  in  the  Aspen  tunnel  such  construction 
timbers  were  broken  in  different  directions  within 
a  length  of  four  feet.  An  engineer  stood  one  day 
in  the  tunnel  on  a  solid  floor  of  these  timbers,  when 
under  him,  and  for  a  distance  of  two  hundred  feet 
ahead  of  him,  the  floor  rose,  straining  and  crack- 
ing, three  feet  up  into  the  air.  Before  the  tunnel 
could  be  finished  it  became  necessary  to  line  over 
700  feet  of  it  with  a  heavy  steel  and  concrete  con- 
struction. Gases  caused  frequent  explosions  and 
only  constant  vigilance  prevented  the  most  serious 
disasters  to  the  men.  When  in  Valhalla  the  heroic 
spirits  of  the  American  section  of  civil  engineers 
assemble  it  will  be  for  the  shades  from  the  far 
Rockies  to  recount  the  tallest  stories. 

Through  a  more  forbidding  country,  and  under 
difficulties  no  less  formidable,  Hood's  Southern 
Pacific  corps  has  made  over  almost  wholly  the 

66 


The  Harriman  Lines 

Central  Pacific  link  of  the  Harriman  lines.  Across 
Nevada  the  men  have  taken  out  more  than  thirteen 
thousand  degrees  of  curvature  and  three  thousand 
feet  of  rise  and  fall.  In  a  distance  of  four  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles  on  the  old  line  they  have 
built  two  hundred  miles  of  entirely  new  road, 
bored  two  miles  of  tunnels,  and  put  eight  million 
pounds  of  steel  into  bridges.  To  do  away  once 
and  forever  with  the  terrific  grades  and  curves 
made  in  pushing  north  around  the  Great  Salt 
Lake,  the  Southern  Pacific  engineers  have  drawn 
a  red  line  from  Ogden  straight  across  the  lake 
and  the  desert  to  Lucin,  Utah,  cutting  forty-four 
miles  of  track  out  of  a  hundred  and  forty-seven 
and  eliminating  four  thousand  three  hundred  de- 
grees of  curvature  and  over  fifteen  hundred  feet 
of  rise  and  fall.  They  have  run  a  trestle  twenty- 
three  miles  long  across  Salt  Lake  through  water 
thirty  feet  deep,  taking  railroad  trains  further  from 
land  than  they  have  ever  yet  been  run ;  and  the 
success  of  their  undertaking  arrested  for  a  mo- 
ment the  attention  of  the  railroad  men  of  Amer- 
ica. 

Wherever  the  Harriman  control  has  been  ex- 
ercised the  policy  of  physical  betterment  has  been 
decisive  and  the  results  are  imposing.  Whatever 
changes  in  control  may  come  to  the  Alton,  for 
example,  it  can  never  be  forgotten  that  it  was 

67 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Harriman  who  made  of  it  a  great  railroad.  Mr. 
Harriman  has  made  good  roads  the  characteristic 
of  his  system,  and  the  roads  have  responded 
strongly  to  the  new  impulse.  The  enormous  ex- 
penditure of  above  $100,000,000  for  improve- 
ments in  a  little  over  three  years  seems  to  leave 
their  treasuries  overflowing.  The  Union  Pacific 
now  owns  its  Northwestern  link,  the  Oregon 
Short  Line,  and  together  the  Union  Pacific  and 
the  Short  Line  own  the  Oregon  Railway  and 
Navigation  Company.  In  addition,  the  Union 
Pacific  has  cemented  a  kinship  with  the  Southern 
Pacific  by  the  purchase  of  the  Huntington  in- 
terest of  $75,000,000. 

It  stands  to-day  the  monetary  fortress  of  the 
Harriman  lines,  holding  stocks  and  bonds  in  its 
treasury  with  a  par  value  of  $341,000,000,  and 
they  group  loyally  about  it  North  and  South  and 
West  to  compose  to-day  the  most  powerful  single 
interest  in  the  transcontinental  field. 


68 


THE   HILL   LINES 


THE   HILL   LINES 

CAN  anything  fresh  be  said  about  James  J. 
Hill?  What  railroad  man  since,  perhaps,  the 
first  Vanderbilt  or  Gould  has  filled  so  large  a 
measure  of  notice  ?  Have  we,  indeed,  a  public 
man  concerning  whom  anecdotes  have  been  more 
searchingly  recounted,  or  whose  affairs  have  sup- 
plied so  much  material  for  first-page  newspaper 
stories  ? 

Canada  gave  Mr.  Hill  to  us ;  and  we,  in  turn, 
have  been  generous  with  the  Dominion,  for  we 
gave  to  her  Sir  William  Van  Home.  It  would 
be  temerity  to  say  which  has  the  best  of  the  ex- 
change; this  thought  only  may  be  ventured — 
that  neither  side  has  ever  suggested  trading  back. 
The  work  of  these  two  men,  and  what  they  have 
accomplished,  is  much  the  same.  The  contrast 
becomes  noticeable  only  when  we  consider  how 
the  two  have  been  repaid  by  their  adopted  coun- 
tries. They  are  each  railroad  builders,  organizers, 
and  operators,  and  of  the  first  order;  men  whose 
rank  in  the  Bradstreet  of  railroad  men  is  AaAaAl. 
The  expatriated  American  has  been  led  for  distin- 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

guished  services  before  a  grateful  sovereign  to 
kneel  and  arise  a  knight  of  her  realm.  Mr.  Hill's 
sovereign,  the  State  of  Minnesota,  has  periodically 
led  her  greatest  son  out  as  a  public  culprit,  with 
a  rope  around  his  neck,  to  do  penance  for  his  ser- 
vices in  helping,  more  than  any  other  one  man, 
living  or  dead,  to  make  her  all  she  is  in  wealth 
and  development  to-day. 

Mr.  Hill,  however,  has  probably  acquired  hu- 
mility; certainly  he  has  long  been  patient  of  criti- 
cism. What  is  remarkable  in  his  make-up  is  his 
boyish  loyalty  to  his  adopted  country  and  its  peo- 
ple, and  one  can  speak  against  Minnesota  or  Min- 
nesota people  only  at  the  risk  of  waking  Mr  Hill 
up  very  seriously.  Other  men,  tiring  of  continued 
abuse,  get  angry,  slam  their  suits  of  project  and 
ambition  on  the  table,  and  bid  good-by  to  the 
annoyances  of  the  game;  Mr.  Hill  only  smiles, 
calls  for  fresh  cards,  and  deals  again. 

I  have  called  him  patient  of  criticism.  About 
1873,  when  still  a  steamboat  man,  he  had  got 
together  $100,000.  There  was  then  in  Minne- 
sota a  little  railroad  called  the  St.  Paul  and  Pacific 
that  had  been  run  probably  by  the  legislators  or 
statesmen  of  that  day ;  at  all  events,  it  was  both 
bankrupt  and  six  months  behind  in  its  pay-roll. 
To  buy  it  Mr.  Hill  needed  $500,000.  No  one 
in  Minnesota  would  lend  him  so  much ;  probably 

72 


I    N    I    B    O    I    A 


fS  W 


Ashland 

\:1S^H^ 


Grand  Canyon  ! 

| SANTA  FE 

Ash  Fork!  X,, 

//Albuquerque 

'N    E^W 


<>          jr.:    s 


T  T  VFQ 


The  Hill  Lines 

no  one  had  so  much  to  lend.  He  tramped  back 
to  Canada  and  persuaded  the  Bank  of  Montreal, 
somewhat  against  its  inclination,  to  let  him  have 
the  needed  sum. 

For  that  loan  the  directors  of  the  Bank  of 
Montreal  were  seriously  criticised.  There  were 
men  as  far  back  as  1873  to  laugh  at  Hill's  proj- 
ects. These  said  that  his  ridiculous  purchase 
would  ruin  not  only  him  but  his  Canadian  friends ; 
that  the  road  never  had  paid  and  never  could  be 
made  to  pay.  Yet  that  Jim  Crow  line  of  the 
seventies  was  the  foundation  of  the  Great  North- 
ern System,  with  its  rails  spreading  across  Dakota 
and  Montana  and  opening  on  distant  Puget  Sound 
— the  road  that  has  never,  from  the  first  years  of 
its  organization,  failed  to  pay  regular  dividends, 
and  whose  shares  command  a  market  and  a  pre- 
mium when  good  railroad  shares  go  begging. 
Nor  is  this  all.  This  great  Northern  System 
earned  the  money  that  made  it  possible  to  make 
a  Hill  line  of  the  Burlington,  with  its  tremendous 
investment  of  two  hundreds  of  millions,  and  has 
made  Mr.  H'.ll  and  his  friends  a  dominant  interest 
in  Northern  Pacific.  In  this  way  Mr.  Hill  repaid 
not  only  his  Bank  of  Montreal  friends  but  that 
timid  element  among  them  who  feared  the  loss 
of  their  $500,000.  He  has  returned  their  money 
and  made  the  men  that  then  stood  by  him  mill- 

73 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

ionaires,  and  they  are  millionaires  and  lords  of  the 
British  realm  to-day. 

After  1873  he  moved  again  decisively.  He 
declared  in  1879  that  he  meant  to  put  the 
Great  Northern  across  the  continent.  His  friends 
stood  surprised,  and  again  men  laughed.  Hill, 
they  said,  was  insane.  No  transcontinental  road 
had  yet  been  built  without  milking  the  Govern- 
ment; that  was  the  primer  of  transcontinental 
railroad  effort.  Either  the  United  States  Treasury 
must  be  looted  or  an  enormous  grant  of  public 
lands  coaxed  from  Congress.  Did  Mr.  Hill,  they 
asked,  purpose  to  build  a  line  with  his  own  money 
to  compete  with  these  subsidized  whales  ?  More- 
over, did  he  propose  building  his  line  north  of  the 
Northern  Pacific,  which  was  already  so  far  north 
that  its  country  would  not  grow  wheat  ?  From 
conclusions  drawn  in  this  way  it  remained  only  to 
nickname  the  new  venture,  and  the  Great  North- 
ern was  dubbed  "  Hill's  Folly " ;  but  he  had  set 
his  mind  to  cross  the  continent. 

In  1 893,  again  an  ominous  date,  he  put  his  foot 
on  the  Pacific  Coast  with  the  only  line  that  ever 
got  there  without  the  aid  of  a  dollar  of  public 
money  or  an  acre  of  public  land. 

When  he  had  reached  his  goal  there  came  the 
prostration  of  the  country's  industries  due  to  the 
late  panic.  Railroads  everywhere  fell  into  re- 

74 


The  Hill  Lines 

ceivers'  hands.  Receivers  came  to  the  Santa  Fe, 
receivers  to  the  Union  Pacific,  receivers  to  the 
Northern  Pacific ;  but  no  receiver  to  Hill's  Folly. 
Mr.  Hill  kept  his  interest  paid,  and  through  the 
panic  years  made  just  a  little  money.  He  man- 
aged his  road,  managed  his  borrowing,  built  a 
little  branch  once  in  a  while,  and  so  astonished 
the  less  fortunate  owners  of  the  Northern  Pacific 
that  they  came  from  Berlin  all  the  way  across  the 
Atlantic  to  beg  the  owner  of  Hill's  Folly  to  take 
hold  of  their  road  and  manage  it. 

Mr.  Hill  was  not,  even  then,  unknown  on  the 
Continent.  He  does  his  own  financing.  If  he 
needs  money  he  goes  to  London  or  to  Berlin  and 
gets  it.  He  works  with  bankers  as  partners  in 
great  undertakings,  but  he  needs  no  syndicates  to 
underwrite  his  securities  and  pays  none  to  do  so, 
and  he  weathered  the  panic  of  1893  with  on^7 
that  loyal  band  of  friends  behind  him  who,  per- 
haps, were  more  beholden  to  Mr.  Hill  than  he  to 
them.  This  steamboat  pioneer,  who  in  so  many 
ways  suggests  that  earlier  famous  steamboat  pio- 
neer, Cornelius  Vanderbilt,  is  not  only  builder  and 
operator  but  financier  as  well. 

Something  more  than  executive  ability  is  need- 
ed to  succeed  in  fields  so  widely  different,  and  to 
his  aggressiveness  as  an  operator  Mr.  Hill  adds 
notable  sagacity.  His  judgment  has  never  been 

75 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

seriously  at  fault  in  his  undertakings.  To  a  man 
who  knew  the  North  less  thoroughly  the  project 
of  putting  a  railroad  across  the  continent  above 
the  forty-eighth  parallel  must  have  proved,  as  all 
predicted  it  would,  disastrous.  But  Mr.  Hill 
knew  the  country  and  its  limitless  possibilities. 
With  his  grasp  of  things  he  could  hardly  have 
failed  in  any  undertaking;  he  would  have  made 
a  great  farmer  or  miller  or  merchant.  Long  be- 
fore this  man  put  his  road  across  the  Rockies  he 
had  tramped  on  snowshoes  over  the  drifts  of  the 
future  wheat  belt  of  the  world,  and  ridden  for  days 
behind  dogs  across  the  white  and  silent  wastes  of 
Canada.  It  was  not  on  sunny  seas  nor  under 
summer  skies  that  Mr.  Hill  sought  fortune;  but 
facing  the  wind,  heading  for  the  wilderness,  plant- 
ing outposts  of  civilization  in  the  teeth  of  the 
blizzard  and  the  frost;  and,  with  the  North  con- 
quered, there  remained  one  more  decisive  step — 
to  connect  it  commercially  with  the  corn  belt 
and  the  manufacturing  industries  of  the  United 
States. 

There  never  was  but  a  single  justification  for 
putting  the  Great  Northern  across  the  continent — 
the  timber  of  the  Puget  Sound  country.  Of  local 
business  on  such  a  line  there  could  be  for  many 
years  only  a  little.  But  the  full  horizon  of  an 
undertaking  does  not  open  at  once  on  the  vision 


The  Hill  Lines 

of  even  the  wisest  of  men.  The  operating  of  the 
Great  Northern  for  a  few  years  developed  the  im- 
perative need  of  some  railroad  link  that  should 
connect  it  directly  with  the  industrial  centres  and 
the  farming  country  of  the  Middle  West.  With 
his  big  railroad  running  from  St.  Paul  to  Puget 
Sound,  Mr.  Hill  knew  that  if  he  could  not  haul 
the  Washington  and  Oregon  pine  East  there  was 
really  not  much  of  anything  else  to  haul.  Nor 
would  this  traffic  stand  a  rate  heavy  enough  to 
cover  bringing  it  East  in  a  car  that  must  go  back 
to  the  coast  empty.  Thus,  not  only  was  he  forced 
to  provide  a  market  for  the  Sound  lumber,  but 
likewise  to  provide  westbound  traffic  for  the 
return  trip  of  his  freight  trains.  Mr.  Hill  faced 
an  exacting  situation. 

His  own  story  of  the  efforts  he  made  to  meet 
this  difficulty  should  be  printed  as  a  treatise  for 
young  traffic  managers.  It  is  impossible  for  an 
American  to  read  it  without  a  thrill  of  industrial 
pride  that  such  men  as  this  are  fellow-countrymen. 
To  discover,  to  develop,  and  to  create  Oriental 
traffic  Mr.  Hill  sent  men  to  China  and  to  Japan, 
and  maintained  them  there  to  investigate  trade 
conditions.  He  had  men  in  the  Orient  whose 
business  it  was  to  get  a  manifest  of  every  ship 
that  cleared  a  Japanese  or  a  Chinese  port ;  to  find 
not  alone  what  the  exports  and  the  imports  of 

77 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

these  countries  consisted  of,  but  where  the  exports 
went.  He  put  a  traffic  representative  in  the 
Orient,  and  covered  the  Eastern  United  States 
with  industrial  ants  whose  work  it  was  to  turn 
traffic  to  the  Great  Northern.  His  agents  found 
out  what  the  factories  of  New  England  were 
making,  and  in  China  and  Japan  his  men  sought 
an  Oriental  market  for  the  stuff. 

Of  his  traffic  department  he  asked  nothing  that 
he  could  not  bring  about  himself.  Distinguished 
Japanese  guests  of  Mr.  Hill's  in  1896,  building 
new  roads  in  Japan,  were  not  allowed  to  leave  for 
Europe  to  place  their  orders  for  Belgian  or  Eng- 
lish rails  until,  after  dinner,  they  had  had  a  little 
talk  with  him  about  it.  As  they  were  to  spend 
a  day  or  two  in  his  company  he  asked  if  he  might 
see  what  could  be  done  on  American  rails.  So 
considerate  a  host  could  hardly  be  denied,  and 
Mr.  Hill  cabled  friends  in  London  for  the  best 
quotations  on  Antwerp  and  Middleboro  rails,  and 
the  best  charters  to  Yokohama.  He  found  the 
foreign  rails  could  be  delivered  there  at  about 
$29  a  ton.  He  telegraphed  Chicago  and  told  the 
steel  men  that  if  they  would  make  a  price  of 
$19.50  on  American  rails  the  Great  Northern 
would  lay  them  in  Yokohama  for  $8  a  ton.  The 
Chicago  men  made  the  price,  and  Mr.  Hill's  rail- 
roads and  steamships  landed  in  Yokohama  15,000 

78 


The  Hill  Lines 

tons  of  Chicago  rails,  the  first  American  steel  rails 
ever  sold  in  Japan. 

The  transaction  was  only  an  incident,  but  it 
illustrates  Mr.  Hill.  By  this  time  even  Japanese 
manufacturers  had  been  attracted  by  the  Great 
Northern  policies.  Passing  across  the  American 
continent,  a  party  of  them  were  gently  but  firmly 
detained  by  this  master  builder  of  trade,  who,  fix- 
ing on  them  an  ancient  mariner  eye,  asked  about 
the  poor  cotton  they  were  spinning  at  home — the 
India  cotton  with  the  short  staple  that  made  the 
poor  yarn.  The  Japs  were  disposed  to  stick  to 
their  cheap  cotton,  but  they  were  not  so  easily  to 
escape.  Rather  than  let  them  go,  Mr.  Hill  per- 
suaded them  to  try  one  shipment  of  American 
cotton  upon  his  guarantee  that  if  it  should  not 
prove  profitable  to  mix  our  long-staple  cotton 
with  the  short  staple  from  India  he  would  pay  for 
the  trial  shipment  himself.  Such  was  the  begin- 
ning of  a  little  cotton  business  with  the  Orient. 
Mr.  Hill  was  not  called  on  to  pay  for  the  trial 
shipment,  but  since  then  raw-cotton  exports  to 
Japan  have  reached  as  high  as  160,000,000 
pounds  in  a  single  year,  and  of  this  quantity 
Mr.  Hill's  lines  carry  three-fourths.  The  story 
of  cotton  piece  goods,  which  go  to  China,  is 
much  the  same.  When  Mr.  Hill  reached  Puget 
Sound  we  were  exporting  65,000,000  yards;  in 

79 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

1902  we  exported  335,000,000  yards.  To  un- 
derstand his  influence  in  bringing  this  about  look 
up  the  percentage  of  this  product  that  goes  by 
way  of  Puget  Sound.  Practically  all  of  this  in- 
crease in  cotton  traffic  came  about  through  the 
planning  of  the  indefatigable  Mr.  Hill. 

To  appreciate,  also,  what  this  particular  traffic 
means,  consider  where  the  raw  cotton  of  this 
country  comes  from  and  where  Mr.  Hill's  rail- 
roads lie,  on  the  Canadian  border.  Unless  he 
should  undertake  to  export  Florida  pineapples  to 
Siberia,  how  could  he  possibly  stir  up  trade  be- 
tween two  corners  of  the  world  more  remote  from 
his  own  stamping-ground"?  Moreover,  a  man 
familiar  with  railroad  conditions  in  the  South,  if 
asked  why  freight  rates  on  cotton  are  high,  will 
answer  that  it  is  not  alone  because  cotton  is  haz- 
ardous as  a  commodity  and  represents,  pound  for 
pound,  ten  times  the  value  of  corn,  but  that  the 
market  is  a  limited  one;  that  if  all  the  cotton 
lands  in  the  State  of  Mississippi  were  cultivated 
they  alone  would  supply  the  American  cotton 
now  used  in  the  world.  There  is  no  incentive, 
unless  the  market  can  constantly  be  enlarged,  for 
Southern  roads  to  carry  cotton  cheaper.  Here, 
then,  comes  a  railroad  man  from  the  far  North- 
west, and  single-handed  supplies  the  primary  in- 
centive; and  if  the  trade  with  the  Orient  ever 

80 


The  Hill  Lines 

becomes  considerable,  Southern  cotton  will  be 
marketed  cheaper  everywhere  because  a  man 
whom  cotton  growers  never  saw,  and  whom  thou- 
sands never  heard  of,  is  now  sending  their  prod- 
uct from  Galveston  and  New  Orleans,  on  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  to  Yokohama,  Japan,  by  way 
of  Puget  Sound.  Observe,  too,  the  exceedingly 
delicate  adjustment  of  traffic  conditions;  this 
happens  not  because  there  are  not  equally  strong 
railroads  to  the  coast  further  south,  but  because 
those  roads  lack  the  Puget  Sound  lumber  to  bring 
east  in  the  cars  that  take  the  cotton  west,  and  it 
costs  practically  as  much  to  pull  an  empty  car  as 
a  loaded  one.  The  Santa  Fe,  therefore,  prefers 
delivering  Texas  cotton  to  Mr.  Hill's  Burlington 
road  at  St.  Louis  to  hauling  it  to  California. 

But  neither  a  fortuitous  shipment  of  steel  rails 
nor  a  modestly  growing  cotton  business  by  any 
means  solve  Mr.  Hill's  traffic  problems.  It  is  a 
question  of  unceasing  effort  to  build  up  com- 
modity business.  He  carries  nails  and  wire,  in 
great  quantities,  from  Lake  Erie  to  Hongkong 
for  forty-five  cents  a  hundred  pounds.  A  city 
man  can  hardly  get  a  keg  of  nails  from  a  down- 
town shop  to  his  suburban  home  for  less  than 
Mr.  Hill  carries  a  similar  keg  across  a  continent 
and  an  ocean,  ten  thousand  miles.  Such  a  rate, 
of  course,  is  very  low,  and  calls  for  the  closest 

81 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

figuring  to  leave  a  margin  of  profit.  The  Hill 
lines  are  compelled,  to  use  his  own  forcible  words, 
to  look  for  anything  and  everything  that  will  sup- 
ply westbound  business,  whether  destined  for  the 
Pacific  Coast,  for  Alaska,  Honolulu,  China,  Japan, 
the  Philippines — anywhere,  if  they  would  keep 
their  freight  cars  loaded  both  ways.  Moreover, 
if  an  international  traffic  is  to  be  established  the 
first  absolute  requisite  is  permanent  rates;  not 
merely  day  in  and  out,  but  substantially  year  in 
and  out;  and  Mr.  Hill  found  that  unless  he  could 
make  his  rates  permanent  he  could  not  hope  to 
succeed  in  his  huge  enterprise. 

Thus  a  military  necessity  confronted  him  :  that 
of  freeing  himself  from  the  uncertainty  of  joint 
rates  which  might  be  one  thing  to-day  and  a 
wholly  impossible  thing  to-morrow.  He  needed 
access  over  his  own  rails  to  Chicago  and  St.  Louis 
and  to  the  factories  and  farms  of  the  corn  belt.  In 
a  word,  he  must  be  able  to  make  his  own  rate 
from  where  the  traffic  originates  to  where  his 
shippers  market  it.  Connecting  lines  whose  in- 
terests might  lie  to-day  in  a  favorable  joint  rate  to 
the  Orient  might  to-morrow  conclude  that  there 
was  nothing  in  the  business,  and  withdraw  it. 
Mr.  Hill,  in  order  to  hold  his  ground,  saw  him- 
self compelled  to  extend  his  lines  into  the  lower 
Lake  country  and  the  Mississippi  Valley. 


The  Hill  Lines 

The  conclusion  forced  him  into  the  greatest 
undertaking  of  his  already  remarkable  career.  To 
build  such  a  road  as  he  required  would  be  a  mat- 
ter of  years ;  he  needed  one  ready-to-wear,  and  he 
needed  a  great  deal  of  money  to  make  the  pur- 
chase. This  time  $500,000  would  not  do,  nor  a 
million,  nor  several  millions ;  he  needed  now  hun- 
dreds of  millions;  but  his  credit  was  still  good, 
and,  taking  in  a  reliable  partner  whose  interests 
coincided  with  his  own,  he  bought  the  Burlington 
Road. 

The  story  of  the  Burlington  is  in  itself  out  of 
the  ordinary.  It  has  always  been  aggressive  in 
its  management  and  peculiarly  successful  in  its 
ventures.  Any  Western  railroad  man  esteems 
himself  fortunate  when  he  can  get  business  away 
from  the  Burlington.  To  take  a  fall  out  of  the 
Burlington  is  a  feather  in  any  traffic  manager's 
cap,  and  it  is  odds  that  for  some  time  thereafter 
he  will  be  kept  busy  in  holding  his  ground,  for, 
unless  a  very  handy  man,  he  is  likely  to  be  thrown 
on  the  defensive  at  once.  This  curiously  strong 
grip  on  business  has  never  been  advanced  by  the 
cutting  of  rates,  but  rather  by  a  keen  realization 
of  the  fact  that  business,  like  kissing,  goes  by 
favor.  The  Burlington  management  has  always 
been  characterized  by  astuteness,  and  its  people 
have  cultivated  the  art  of  making  friends.  Mr. 

83 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Perkins,  who  made  the  wonderful  road  what  it 
is,  never  liked  to  have  enemies  or  trouble.  His 
motto  was,  briefly,  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  busi- 
ness and  peace ;  and  it  is  astonishing  how  closely 
he  approximated  his  ideal.  Somehow,  too,  the 
Burlington  Road  succeeded  in  creating  among  its 
men  an  esprit  de  corps^  a  loyalty  to  itself,  so  that 
former  Burlington  officials  refer  with  certain  pride 
to  the  old  road.  When  one  meets,  East  or  West, 
on  American  roads  a  Burlington  man  he  is  con- 
scious, too,  of  a  consideration  of  the  sort  that  asks, 
Now,  what  can  I  do  for  you  ?  rather  than,  What 
can  you  do  for  me  ?  And,  as  I  shall  note  hereafter, 
so  widely  have  the  graduates  of  the  road  been 
distributed  in  railroad  circles  that  at  one  time,  not 
many  years  ago,  the  executive  officers  of  each  of 
our  transcontinental  lines  were  Burlington  men. 
It  is  not  fanciful,  then,  to  assert  that,  in  addition 
to  8,700  miles  of  track  and  equipment  in  prime 
condition,  Mr.  Hill  took  over  in  the  good-will  of 
the  Burlington,  a  valuable  asset  in  itself. 

Geographically,  Mr.  Hill  found  that  the  road 
lay  precisely  fitted  to  his  Northern  needs.  The 
Burlington,  with  a  base  on  the  Great  Lakes,  ex- 
tends into  the  Rocky  Mountains.  It  is  powerful 
on  the  Mississippi  River,  and  on  the  Missouri 
it  is  first.  Its  mileage  in  the  State  of  Nebraska 
alone  would  give  it  a  trunk  line  from  New  York 

84 


The  Hill  Lines 

to  Salt  Lake  City,  and  its  Iowa  mileage  added 
would  extend  such  a  line  to  Los  Angeles  or 
Puget  Sound.  One  arm  of  the  Burlington  con- 
nects Chicago  and  Denver ;  another,  striking  from 
St.  Louis  and  Kansas  City,  enters  Nebraska  at  its 
extreme  southeastern  corner,  winds  through  the 
Black  Hills  of  Dakota  and  Wyoming,  and  crosses 
the  Crow  Reservation  in  Montana  to  unite  with 
the  Northern  Pacific.  Here  its  right  of  way, 
lying  within  the  shadow  of  the  Big  Horn  Moun- 
tains, drops  into  the  valley  of  the  Little  Big  Horn 
River  and  follows  the  fatal  path  that  Custer  and 
the  Seventh  Cavalry  followed  in  June,  1876.  It 
is  historic  ground.  Amid  the  wastes  of  this  far 
and  silent  desolation  the  traveller  finds  a  soldiers' 
cemetery.  A  tragic  feature  marks  its  headstones ; 
they  are  nameless,  for  here  Custer  with  260  men, 
surrounded  by  the  Sioux  and  Cheyennes,  made 
his  last  stand,  and  none  survived  to  tell  the  story. 
Where,  long  after  the  fight,  each  skeleton, 
bleached  by  the  summer's  sun,  lay  on  the  field, 
a  stake  was  driven  and  a  stone  marks  the  spot. 

This  is  the  link  of  the  Burlington  that  connects 
the  Puget  Sound  roads  with  the  Mississippi  Val- 
ley and  the  Great  Lakes;  with  the  Western 
smelters  at  Denver,  in  the  Black  Hills,  at  Kan- 
sas City  and  Omaha,  and  at  Aurora,  111. ;  with 
the  cotton  roads  at  St.  Louis  and  Kansas  City; 

85 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

with  the  packing-houses  at  Omaha,  St.  Joe,  Kan- 
sas City,  and  Chicago.  On  the  Mississippi  River 
the  Burlington  taps  every  town  from  Minneapo- 
lis to  St.  Louis,  and  it  reaches  a  large  percentage 
of  the  manufacturing  industries  of  Illinois. 

But  of  more  vital  importance  than  all  these 
things,  the  Burlington  covers  the  lumber-consum- 
ing States  of  the  country.  It  counts  1,400  miles 
of  trackage  in  Iowa,  a  State  that  is  not  only  the 
greatest  consumer  of  lumber  in  the  Union,  but 
exceeds  in  its  consumption  any  three  States.  Mr. 
Frederick  Weyerhauser  has  said  that  he  would 
rather  have  the  lumber  trade  of  Iowa  than  that 
of  any  three  other  States  together.  Mr.  Hill 
is  probably  right,  then,  in  saying  that  for  the  de- 
velopment of  his  natural  resources,  so  to  call  them, 
the  Burlington  is  of  as  much  value  to  him  as  per- 
haps all  other  Western  roads  combined. 

With  Michigan  already  on  the  point  of  con- 
suming more  lumber  than  it  supplies,  the  signifi- 
cance of  his  early  foresight  in  building  into  the 
Puget  Sound  timber  country,  and  later  in  secur- 
ing an  outlet  for  its  timber  through  direct  entry 
into  the  big  domestic  lumber  markets,  becomes 
apparent.  Of  equal  moment  is  the  enormous 
Oriental  traffic  Mr.  Hill  had  created  in  American 
flour.  American  flour  gets  only  as  far  as  the  Chi- 
nese ports  and  along  the  coast ;  local  taxation  pre- 
86 


The  Hill  Lines 

vents  its  reaching  the  interior  of  the  empire.  Even 
on  the  coast  it  is  used  rather  as  a  confection  than 
as  a  staple  for  bread;  still,  last  year  Puget  Sound 
exported  2,000,000  barrels  of  flour  to  the  Orient. 
Ten  years  ago  Mr.  Hill  found  Puget  Sound 
wheat  going  to  Liverpool  by  way  of  Cape  Horn. 
To-day  it  is  practically  all  ground  at  home  into 
flour  which  his  boats  carry  to  China.  These 
Sound  exports  of  flour  have  in  ten  years  increased 
617  per  cent.  The  Hill  roads  are  putting  into 
commission  a  line  of  new  steamships  for  Ori- 
ental traffic,  two  of  which,  taken  together,  exceed 
in  capacity  the  combined  tonnage  of  the  entire 
Canadian  Pacific  fleet  from  Vancouver.  Land- 
ing, as  he  is,  then,  American  flour  and  nails  in 
Hongkong  and,  save  for  the  present  hostilities, 
American  cotton  and  rails  in  Yokohama,  bring- 
ing the  forests  of  Washington  to  the  prairie  farms 
of  Iowa,  stirring  up  trade  in  every  port  of  the 
Far  East  and  in  credit  among  the  most  careful 
bankers  in  Europe  whose  money  he  is  borrowing 
on  his  own  notes  to  develop  the  Northwest,  is  it 
possible  that  a  charge  of  plotting  in  restraint  of 
trade  can  successfully  be  maintained  against  this 
man  ?  Has  Mr.  Hill  burned  any  one's  refineries, 
blown  up  any  rival  railroad  bridges,  bought  any 
lines  to  dismantle  them,  driven  other  railroads  out 
of  business,  or  wrecked  them  to  freeze  out  stock- 

87 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

holders  and  bondholders?  It  would  be  compe- 
tent, conceivably,  for  the  managers  of  other  rail- 
roads, the  Canadian  Pacific,  for  instance,  to  ask 
that  Mr.  Hill  be  restrained  from  further  attempts 
at  getting  their  trade.  That  which  will  be  incred- 
ible to  men  fifty  years  from  now  is  that  he  should 
have  been  assailed  as  he  has  been  in  the  Merger 
Case  by  the  circumstance  and  dignity  of  the 
United  States  as  an  industrial  wrong-doer. 

It  should  console  Mr.  Hill,  however,  to  reflect 
that  in  the  canonization  of  really  great  men  the 
first  appropriation  of  public  moneys  is  for  fagots, 
the  quarrying  of  the  marble  usually  being  left  to 
the  third  and  fourth  generations.  Perspective  is 
needed  for  the  right  estimate  of  extraordinary 
men,  and  it  is  supplied  by  time ;  our  mental  mir- 
rors are  fitted  to  reflect  the  ordinary  sort  of  mortals 
others  blur  on  them.  We  call  Mr.  Hill,  freely, 
Jim  Hill,  as  the  Genoese,  perhaps,  referred  collo- 
quially to  Chris  Columbus.  Chris  was  at  too  close 
range  for  them  quite  to  comprehend.  Spain 
doubtless  at  that  day  was  filled  with  bigger  men 
than  the  Italian  adventurer;  yet  history,  forget- 
ting their  names,  writes  his  in  full. 

How  can  the  story  of  the  Northwest  ever  be 
written  without  the  story  of  Hill?  When  he 
put  his  road  across  the  continent  he  stood  on  end 
the  railroad  egg  of  the  North  and  showed  men 


The  Hill  Lines 

how  simple  and  easy  it  was,  after  all.  Napoleon's 
first  question  was,  What  has  he  done?  That 
question  must  always  be  answered  in  attempting 
fairly  to  place  Mr.  Hill  among  the  men  who  have 
developed  and  created  American  trade  and  indus- 
try. He  is  the  last  of  our  great  railroad  pioneers. 
We  cannot  hope  for  more  men  to  fill  such  niches 
in  our  history  because  there  are  no  more  such 
niches  to  be  filled.  There  are  no  longer  within 
our  borders  railroad  wildernesses  to  be  explored ; 
of  these  Mr.  Hill  has  thrown  open  the  last. 


89 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  PITTSBURG 


UNP 


THE  FIGHT    FOR   PITTSBURG 

DURING  the  closing  days  of  the  final  session  of 
the  Fifty-sixth  Congress,  William  McKinley  be- 
ing President  of  the  United  States  and  Joseph 
Ramsey,  Jr.,  president  of  the  Wabash  Railroad,  a 
Senator  from  the  State  of  Pennsylvania  and  a 
Representative  from  the  Pittsburg  district  intro- 
duced, by  request,  into  their  respective  houses 
some  sort  of  a  bill  or  joint  resolution.  Couched 
in  a  few  words,  it  provided  for  the  revival  of  a 
bill  by  which  Congress  had  once  authorized  the 
building  of  a  railroad  bridge  across  the  Mononga- 
hela  River  into  the  city  of  Pittsburg.  No  attempt 
had  been  made  by  the  original  applicants  for  the 
privilege  to  avail  themselves  of  it,  and  their  per- 
mission had  lapsed  by  limitation.  Granted  origi- 
nally for  the  construction  of  a  steam  railroad  bridge, 
a  renewal  of  the  right  was  now  desired  on  behalf 
of  a  projected  trolley  line. 

Trolley  lines  are  everywhere  and  ever-ready, 
and  resolutions  in  their  behalf  are  a  necessary  part 
of  current  legislation.  Trolley  lines  are  more  or 
less  clamorous  among  the  constituents  of  every 

93 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Congressman,  and  by  resolutions  of  one  sort  or 
another  they  are  usually  appeased.  Moreover, 
the  introduction  of  a  measure  by  request  costs 
little.  Not  one  joint  Congressional  resolution  in 
a  hundred  passes ;  when  one  does  pass  it  is  rarely 
heard  of  again. 

This  particular  measure,  however,  was  peculiar; 
peculiar  in  the  innocence  of  its  wording  and  pe- 
culiar in  the  tremendous  sting  in  its  tail. 

It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  there  was  not 
one  chance  in  a  thousand  for  it  to  get  through 
both  houses  of  Congress.  The  whirl,  the  confu- 
sion, and  the  rush  of  the  closing  of  the  session 
were  all  against  it.  Moreover,  there  are  a  dozen 
Senators  and  Representatives  whose  very  business 
in  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  is  to  defeat 
the  objects  sought  under  cover  of  precisely  such 
bills — genuine  Congressional  sleuths  who,  while 
raising  their  voices  occasionally  in  behalf  of  the 
people  that  send  them  to  Washington,  are  sleep- 
lessly  vigilant  in  behalf  of  the  friendly  "  interests  " 
which  they  represent. 

A  single  objection  raised  against  the  waif  by 
any  stray  malcontent  in  either  house — any  mem- 
ber with  a  digestion  temporarily  disordered — 
would  have  been  fatal ;  yet,  with  its  purpose  un- 
dreamed of  by  its  legislative  fathers,  and  in  a 
crush  in  which  a  thousand  well  directed  and  fer- 

94 


The  Fight  for  Pittsburg 

vently  urged  measures  always  do  fail,  this  tramp 
bill  slipped  successfully  past  every  peril  of  the 
closing  hours  of  the  turbulent  session.  It  passed ; 
and  its  innocent  words  divided  a  railroad  empire 
— the  long,  hard  fight  of  the  Wabash  to  get  into 
Pittsburg  was  won. 

The  white  light  of  publicity  is  supposed  to 
burn  upon  all  important  legislation  at  Washing- 
ton, and  the  appetite  of  the  press  for  news  of  this 
sort  approaches  the  ferocious.  Yet  here  was  a 
business  calculated  to  shake  the  railroad  world  to 
its  very  centre,  and  loose  its  bitter  dogs  of  war 
from  the  Atlantic  seaboard  to  the  wastes  of  the 
Missouri  River,  done  so  quietly  that  mention 
of  it  never  crept  into  a  Washington  despatch. 
More  singular  still,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
its  very  introduction  had  depended  on  the  good 
offices  of  a  Pennsylvania  Senator  and  a  Pittsburg 
Congressman,  both  of  whom  were  guiltless  of  the 
remotest  intention  of  helping  out  the  Wabash  in 
its  uphill  encounter  with  the  Pennsylvania  Rail- 
road for  a  Pittsburg  terminal. 

A  century  hence,  when  the  curious  traveller  asks 
to  see  a  monument  that  commemorates  our  labo- 
riously planned  and  jealously  guarded  protective 
policy  he  will,  without  doubt,  be  pointed  to  Pitts- 
burg. Pittsburg  is  our  traffic  gold  mine.  When 
it  is  said  that  Pittsburg  and  its  district  originate 

95 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

the  largest  freight  tonnage  of  any  city  in  this 
country,  or  for  that  matter  in  the  world,  the  pub- 
lic mind  grasps  the  statement  fairly  well  and  the 
result  is  some  respect  for  Pittsburg ;  it  was  news 
to  many  when  announced,  but  it  was  accepted 
calmly.  There  is,  however,  more  than  this  to  the 
statement.  Pittsburg  originates  not  only  more 
freight  tonnage  than  any  one  of  our  cities,  but 
more  than  our  three  greatest  cities,  New  York, 
Philadelphia,  and  Chicago  combined. 

A  business  man  can  digest  even  this  extraordi- 
nary fact,  but  how  can  he  keep  clear-headed  when 
told  that  this  traffic  in  the  Pittsburg  district,  taking 
no  account  of  what  merely  passes  through  Pitts- 
burg, reaches  the  stupendous  total  of  75,000,000 
tons  in  a  single  year  ?  Or,  again,  can  he  really 
grasp  what  is  contained  in  the  bare  statement  that 
the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  east  of  Pittsburg 
handles  75,000  tons  of  freight  daily  for  each  mile 
of  its  main  line,  and  that  in  one  year  the  earnings 
of  that  portion  of  the  system  exceeded  $150,000 
a  mile  ? 

These  figures  are  not  in  any  sense  news.  They 
may  be  derived  from  official  reports.  But  the 
public  does  not  read  railroad  reports,  and  it  is  no 
reflection  on  its  intelligence  to  say  that  it  would 
not  understand  them  if  it  did.  Not  even  business 
men,  in  fact,  understand  the  report  of  one  railroad 

96 


W       I  \S     CON 


THE 


The  Fight  for   Pittsburg 

quite  so  well  as  the  executive  officers  of  a  com- 
peting line. 

This  showing  affords  an  inkling  of  what  Pitts- 
burg  and  the  Pennsylvania  road  mean  in  the  rail- 
road world;  a  suggestion  of  the  prize  that  had 
long  hung  suspended  before  the  Wabash  eyes. 
Is  it  any  wonder  that  George  Gould,  owning  the 
Wabash  road,  determined  to  put  $25,000,000 
into  an  effort  to  secure  a  terminal  that  would  open 
the  doors  of  such  a  storehouse  ? 

Let  there  be  frankly  conceded  the  worst  that 
can  be  said — and  harsh  railroad  things  have  been 
said  of  Mr.  Gould ;  for  example,  that  he  is  invad- 
ing a  territory  where  he  does  not  expect  to  de- 
velop one  dollar's  worth  of  new  traffic — yet  it 
comes  in  the  end  to  this :  that,  placed  owner  of 
the  Wabash  system,  as  he  was,  by  the  combina- 
tions going  forward  five  years  ago,  if  he  had 
allowed  himself  to  be  bottled  up  at  Toledo,  at 
Detroit,  or  even  at  Buffalo,  with  Pittsburg  in  his 
grasp,  he  would  not  really  have  been  quite  so 
aggressive  as  big  American  railroad  operators  of 
stern  necessity  are. 

It  is  hardly  more  than  five  years  ago  that  it 
became  apparent  to  the  Gould  interests  that  a 
Pittsburg  terminal  would  become,  in  truth,  a 
strategic  necessity.  When,  in  1 895,  Joseph  Ram- 
sey, Jr.,  was  made  vice-president  of  the  Wabash 

97 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

its  Eastern  terminals  were  Toledo  and  Detroit. 
In  the  meantime  the  various  combinations  of  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  and  those  of  the  Vander- 
bilt  lines  were  taking  shape.  Every  day  empha- 
sized the  purpose  of  each  railway  power  in  the 
country  to  acquire  feeders  for  itself  and  make 
impregnable  a  control  that  would  take  care  of 
irresponsible  competition.  The  Wabash  could 
not  at  that  time  land  freight  even  in  Buffalo  save 
over  a  hostile  connection.  Gradually  it  was  being 
cut  out  of  a  feeder  here  and  a  feeder  there  until 
action  did  become  imperative,  and  the  Wabash 
was  pushed  to  Buffalo.  A  Buffalo  terminal  was 
a  bold  move ;  but  with  Buffalo  once  made  the 
Gould  people  looked  again  from  Toledo  for  new 
conquests,  and  Pittsburg,  like  a  mirage  thrown 
suddenly  into  the  railroad  sky,  loomed  upon  the 
Wabash  horizon. 

The  railway  world  of  the  United  States  was  in 
that  moment  at  the  height  of  an  activity  such  as 
it  had  never  known  and  never  again  within  cen- 
turies can  know.  Territory  was  being  pre- 
empted that  never  again  will  be  open  to  a  railroad 
settler ;  combinations  were  daily  being  made  that 
will  govern  a  thousand  years  from  now,  and 
leases  were  being  executed  that  will  not  terminate 
within  thirty  generations  of  men.  What  may  at 
that  time  happen  to  these  coveted  properties  can 

98 


The  Fight  for  Pittsburg 

scarcely  be  expected  to  interest  the  powers  of  the 
present  generation.  But  five  years  ago  it  meant 
that  the  man  who  wanted  control  of  a  road  or 
needed  a  railroad  footing  in  a  contiguous  territory 
must  act,  or  for  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
years  thereafter  hold  his  peace;  Gould  decided  to 
enter  Pittsburg. 

He  had  on  his  operating  staff  a  man  fitted  for 
the  difficult  venture.  Joseph  Ramsey,  Jr.,  had 
been  for  three  years  vice-president  and  general 
manager  of  the  Wabash.  He  had  entered  the  en- 
gineering corps  of  the  Pan  Handle  road  thirty 
years  earlier.  Within  a  year  thereafter  he  had  been 
transferred  to  the  Dresden  cut-off,  and  while  still 
hardly  more  than  a  boy  had,  as  assistant  engineer, 
located  the  Bell's  Gap  road,  a  circuitous  route 
winding  about  within  the  very  heart  of  the  Alle- 
ghany  Mountains.  His  movements  were  as  rapid 
as  his  promotions.  A  Pittsburger  born  and 
brought  up,  the  Alleghanies  were  this  man's 
birthright,  and  his  early  life  was  spent  as  engi- 
neer, superintendent,  chief  engineer,  from  division 
to  division  and  from  road  to  road,  in  and  out  of 
and  around  Pittsburg.  At  thirty-three,  and  a 
general  manager,  he  had  mastered  as  engineer 
and  operator  every  problem  put  before  him  in 
mountain  railroading,  and  he  knew  his  mountains 
in  the  Pittsburg  district  as  well  as  he  knew  his 

99 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

trigonometry.  Turning  to  Ohio,  his  activities  as 
the  chief  engineer,  the  general  manager,  and  the 
operating  vice-president  of  various  roads  took  him 
from  end  to  end  of  the  State,  and  familiarized  him 
thoroughly  with  the  territory  from  which  he  was 
destined  ten  years  later  to  lead  his  greatest  under- 
taking :  1898  brought  him  face  to  face  with  it. 

From  any  point  of  view  the  problem  of  getting 
a  railroad  into  Pittsburg  is  a  staggering  one.  The 
physical  obstacles  alone  are  overwhelming;  but 
these  difficulties  are  incalculably  increased  by  the 
extraordinary  intrenchment  of  the  Pennsylvania 
road  in  its  own  peculiar  stronghold.  Financially, 
physically,  and  politically,  the  principal  fortress 
of  the  great  road  is  well-nigh  unassailable.  In- 
stinctively alert,  and  representing,  as  they  always 
have  represented,  the  highest  astuteness  in  railway 
management,  the  Pennsylvania  people  had  closed 
avenue  after  avenue  toward  their  centre.  The  ab- 
sorption of  small  lines  that  might  offer  temptation 
to  an  invader  had  been  carried  on  until  railroad 
maps  were  changed  faster  than  new  ones  could 
be  printed.  Nevertheless,  the  Wabash  forces  or- 
ganized for  attack. 

From  Toledo  a  single  loophole  left  unguarded 
made  possible  a  long  march  toward  the  coveted 
territory.  In  leaving  Toledo  eastbound  travel- 
lers on  the  limited  trains  of  the  Lake  Shore 

100 


The  Fight  for  Pittsburg    ;u,Tj 

road  see  for  some  distance  on  the  right  a  single- 
track  railroad  often  mistaken  for  the  Nickel  Plate. 
It  is  a  modest  coal  road  known  as  the  Wheeling 
and  Lake  Erie,  and  it  runs  across  Ohio  from 
Toledo  quite  to  the  eastern  boundary  of  the  State. 
The  Wheeling  and  Lake  Erie  was  owned  by 
Cleveland  people — Myron  T.  Herrick  and  his 
friends — and  was  then  for  sale.  A  gap  of  some 
sixty  miles  from  Jewett,  Ohio,  would  extend  that 
meandering  and  very  quiet  coal  road  to  Pittsburg, 
and  George  Gould  determined  to  buy  the  Wheel- 
ing and  Lake  Erie. 

It  is  said  that  the  property  had  once  been  of- 
fered to  the  Pennsylvania  people.  Whether  true 
or  not,  nothing  could  better  illustrate  the  sharp, 
fast  moves  of  the  game  then  already  on  than  the 
story  of  the  purchase  of  the  Wheeling  and  Lake 
Erie.  So  alive  were  all  parties  at  interest  in  the 
matter,  the  besiegers  and  the  besieged,  that  in  the 
short  interval  between  the  time  Mr.  Gould  deter- 
mined to  buy  the  road  and  the  consummation  of 
his  purchase  he  was  compelled  to  pay  more  for  a 
controlling  interest  in  the  stock  than  the  whole 
road  and  all  of  its  securities  had  originally  been 
offered  for.  But  with  the  purchase  of  the  Wheel- 
ing and  Lake  Erie  the  mask,  so  far  as  ultimate 
intentions  are  concerned,  was  thrown  off  and  war 
began. 

101 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

No  one  will  say  that  it  has  ever  been  other  than 
a  gentlemen's  fight.  The  conditions  of  the  inva- 
sion were  well  understood,  and  quarter  was  neither 
asked  nor  given;  but  the  diplomacy,  the  fine 
moving,  the  gloving  of  the  hand,  and  the  iron 
shock  of  all  the  secret  complications  of  the  con- 
test cannot  be  and  never  will  be  written:  they 
belong  to  the  stories  that  never  are  told.  The 
State  of  Pennsylvania  is  celebrated  not  alone  as 
the  home  of  one  of  the  greatest  railroads  in  the 
world  but  as  the  State  with  the  most  astonishing 
railroad  laws,  this  being  one  of  them :  the  direc- 
tors of  a  railroad  may  in  session  "  adopt,"  with- 
out restriction,  any  route  in  the  State  of  which 
they  choose  to  make  a  survey,  and,  without  doing 
a  dollar's  worth  of  work,  they  may  hold  it  abso- 
lutely for  a  period  of  two  years.  Their  record 
of  their  plans  is  their  own  privileged  secret. 
They  may  meet  in  publicity  or  in  seclusion  and 
"  adopt "  any  part  of  the  Alleghanies  they  fancy, 
but  they  cannot  be  dislodged  within  two  years 
under  any  circumstances,  and,  should  they  care  to 
proceed,  not  then. 

This  peculiar  statute  makes  an  attempt  to 
enter  Pennsylvania  with  a  new  railroad  somewhat 
confusing,  especially  if  there  be  powerful  interests 
to  oppose.  However,  the  rule  that  works  one 
way  works  the  other,  and  the  moves  between  Mr. 

1 02 


The  Fight  for  Pittsburg 

Cassatt's  forces  and  Mr.  Gould's  became  those  of 
experts  at  chess,  with  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  at 
times  most  unexpectedly  calling  check  and  the 
Wabash  retorting  with  counter-check. 

Naturally,  that  which  makes  a  leadership  effec- 
tive in  a  battle  under  cover  such  as  the  Wabash 
was  compelled  to  wage  is  a  thorough  acquaint- 
ance with  all  the  factors  in  the  contest.  Ramsey, 
Gould's  chief  in  the  struggle,  has  been  called,  as 
Grant  was  called,  a  bulldog,  and  it  is  true  that 
the  two  men  have,  in  common  with  Americans 
of  their  peculiarly  emotionless  type,  those  quiet 
and  impassive  qualities  of  persistence  that  go 
to  make  up  really  dangerous  antagonists.  To 
men  such  as  these  an  obstacle  interposed  means 
only  that  it  is  something  to  be  crawled  over,  or 
burrowed  under,  or  turned  by  the  right  flank  or 
turned  by  the  left,  and  as  Grant  hurled  his  men 
against  the  Wilderness  lines  so  Ramsey  hurled 
the  Gould  millions  against  the  Pittsburg  defences. 
In  that  remarkable  city  alone  five  million  dollars 
were  spent  in  acquiring  terminal  property,  and 
those  sixty  miles  of  Jewett  track  that  Ramsey 
built  are  sown  from  end  to  end  with  gold.  A 
single  tunnel  called  for  a  million  dollars ;  a  second 
one  for  nearly  as  much.  Within  a  distance  of 
twenty  miles  there  are  eight  large  tunnels,  several 
concrete  arches  with  fifty-feet  spans  and  fifty 

103 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

heavy  fills,  one  of  them  3,500  feet  long,  built  of 
1,000,000  cubic  yards  of  earth.  In  all  the  United 
States  there  is  nothing  in  railroads  like  this  sixty- 
mile  track.  When  railroad  men  are  told  that 
James  W.  Patterson,  Ramsey's  chief  engineer,  has 
crossed  the  Ohio  Valley  with  a  maximum  grade 
of  seven-tenths  per  cent,  and  a  maximum  curv- 
ature of  three  degrees,  they  are  first  to  express 
admiration  for  his  achievement ;  and  through  the 
most  adverse  topography  and  this  low  rate  of  the 
curves  he  has  managed  to  preserve  sixty-one  per 
cent,  of  straight  track.  To  be  of  value  to  its 
builders  the  line  needed  to  be  equipped  for  high 
tonnage.  The  very  necessities  called  for  a  light- 
grade  road  with  easy  curves,  and  the  engineers 
made  their  surveys  to  fit  the  requirements. 

A  comparison  with  standard  lines  in  the  same 
territory  will  show  how  in  1903  railroad  construc- 
tion has  advanced  over  the  best  construction  of 
earlier  years.  The  Pan  Handle  leaving  the  Ohio 
River  at  Steubenville  for  Pittsburg,  as  the  Wa- 
bash  extension  leaves  it  at  Mingo,  has  two  prom- 
inent summits  on  its  line  as  against  one  on  the 
Wabash.  The  heaviest  grade  on  the  Wabash  is 
less  than  thirty-seven  feet  to  the  mile,  against 
something  like  sixty  in  the  first  construction  of 
the  Pan  Handle.  In  all,  these  forty  miles  of 
Gould  track  have  but  fifty-six  curves,  and  so 

104 


The   Fight  for  Pittsburg 

straight  has  the  line  been  made  that  one  may 
stand  at  the  west  end  of  the  first  Ohio  tunnel  and 
look  through  it  across  the  trestles,  over  the  Mingo 
bridge  and  through  the  tunnel  in  the  West  Vir- 
ginia hill.  Country  roads  were  abandoned  and 
new  ones  built  by  the  engineers;  viaducts  were 
thrown  across  farms  and  mountain  streams  torn 
from  their  courses  to  make  the  Jewett  track.  At 
the  foot  of  Chapel  Hill  Mr.  Patterson  has  pro- 
vided a  fifty- feet  span  arch  with  a  "barrel"  180 
feet  long  containing  the  largest  single  mass  of 
concrete  in  the  form  of  an  arch  in  the  world.  For 
miles  through  the  mountains  the  track  springs 
from  height  to  height  over  enormous  fills  that 
often  exceed  a  hundred  feet  in  depth. 

It  will  not  be  supposed  that  these  results 
have  been  reached  without  strenuous  effort  nor 
without  occasional  subtle  entanglement  for  the 
Wabash  constructionists.  But  they  never  fal- 
tered. Out-manoeuvred  at  one  point,  they  sought 
another;  checked  at  a  gap,  they  bored  a  moun- 
tain. The  most  unexpected  natural  obstacles 
interposed  themselves  even  when  foresight  had 
provided  for  those  of  human  agency.  Under- 
neath the  million-dollar  Green-tree  tunnel  a  coal 
vein,  without  the  knowledge  of  the  owners  of  the 
land,  had  been  stripped.  One  night  a  section  of 
the  tunnel  floor  dropped  eighteen  inches.  It  was 

105 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

not  that  it  cost  forty  thousand  dollars  to  make 
good  the  settling;  what  hurt  most  was  that  it 
took  six  months'  time.  Bridges  were  called  for 
till  steel  mills  threw  up  their  hands.  There  are 
on  this  short  line — without  numbering  either  the 
great  Mingo  bridge  across  the  Ohio  with  a  seven- 
hundred-foot  cantilever  span  or  the  tremendous 
Monongahela  cantilever  at  Pittsburg  —  more 
bridges  than  there  are  miles  of  track.  The  Mo- 
nongahela bridge,  scene  of  a  tragic  accident  dur- 
ing its  building,  is  in  itself  most  unusual.  Like 
the  Mingo  bridge  it  provides  for  a  double  track 
and  is  built  with  thirty-two  feet  between  truss 
centres.  It  stands  on  a  one-per-cent.  grade,  and 
rises,  at  the  low  end,  a  clear  seventy  feet  above 
full  pool  in  the  Monongahela  River.  The  weight 
of  this  singular  and  enormous  structure  is  above 
7,000  tons.  A  mate  to  it,  indeed,  is  not  to  be 
found  on  this  side  the  ocean.  For  its  only  bigger 
brother  one  must  go  to  Queensferry,  Scotland, 
where  years  ago  the  North  British  Railway  Com- 
pany flung  across  the  estuary  of  the  Forth  River 
the  world-famed  cantilevers  that  are  united  in 
spans  1,710  feet  long;  but  even  this  unexampled 
undertaking  leaves  the  Wabash  bridge,  at  812 
feet  in  a  clear  span  from  centre  to  centre  of 
towers,  the  second  longest  cantilever  bridge  in 
the  world ;  and  this  is  the  bridge  whose  very  per- 

106 


The  Fight  for  Pittsburg 

mission  to  be,  slipped  past  the  Pennsylvania 
watchdogs  in  Congress  as  modestly  as  a  mouse 
could  slip  through  a  hole  in  a  barn  floor. 

In  a  railroad  fight,  however,  there  is  no  fatal- 
ism, and  it  should  not  be  inferred  that  if  the  Wa- 
bash  had  not  won  at  that  particular  time  at  Wash- 
ington the  fight  would  not  have  been  fought  out 
again  there  or  elsewhere.  The  Washington  blow, 
though  a  serious  one  to  the  defenders,  left  them 
undaunted,  and  in  the  Pittsburg  councils  they 
repeatedly  prevented  the  passage  of  an  ordinance 
giving  to  the  Wabash  permission  to  enter  the 
city.  While  the  battle  raged  in  the  city  councils 
the  Wabash  people  went  ahead  with  their  big 
Monongahela  bridge,  which  without  an  ordinance 
to  cross  Pittsburg  streets  with  their  elevated 
structure  must  have  proved  valueless. 

Pittsburg  looked  on  amazed  at  their  apparent 
recklessness.  Hostile  city  officials  sought  to  en- 
join Joseph  Ramsey  and  his  cohorts  from  wasting 
their  money  on  a  structure  across  the  river  when 
they  could  never  get  into  the  town ;  but  in  court 
the  Wabash  counsel  pleaded  the  sovereign 
authority  of  Congress  for  its  license  to  cross  a 
navigable  stream,  and  the  court  decided  an  in- 
junction could  not  issue.  Appealed  to  the  Su- 
preme Court,  the  decision  in  the  case  below 
was  reversed,  but  work  had  been  going  steadily 

107 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

on  and  the  city  of  Pittsburg  itself  had  been  mean- 
time waking  up.  The  tide  of  unprecedented 
prosperity  which  spread  over  the  United  States 
and  reached  its  climax  in  1901-02  swept  even  so 
highly  organized  and  perfectly  disciplined  a  rail- 
road system  as  the  Pennsylvania  for  a  moment 
completely  off  its  feet.  Traffic  in  ever-increasing 
volume  overpowered  its  heavy  equipment,  and, 
worst  of  all,  congested  its  freight  yards. 

Pittsburg  became  an  absolute  storm  centre, 
and  loaded  cars  at  the  Pittsburg  yards  could  not 
be  got  in  or  out;  the  situation  became  a  traffic 
tragedy,  resulting  in  the  most  strenuous  personal 
effort  on  the  part  of  high  executive  officials  of 
the  great  road  to  bring  order  out  of  the  ter- 
minal chaos  at  Pittsburg.  This  freight  block- 
ade came  at  a  time  when  business  men  were 
least  willing  to  bear  it.  To  plead  that  no  other 
road  under  similar  difficulties  could  do  half  so 
well  availed  nothing.  The  Wabash,  gently  fan- 
ning the  flame  of  local  discontent,  appealed  to  the 
business  interests  of  Pittsburg  to  bring  competi- 
tion into  the  city.  The  Wabash  issue  was  made 
of  a  sudden  a  fierce  political  one,  and  Mr.  Ramsey, 
who  probably  never  for  a  moment  had  doubted 
that,  when  he  had  once  clearly  demonstrated 
to  a  suspicious  public  that  the  Wabash  wa& 
making  a  good-faith  attempt  to  bring  a  compet 

108 


The  Fight  for  Pittsburg 

ing  line  into  the  town,  public  opinion  itself  would 
force  the  passage  of  an  enabling  ordinance,  found 
himself  again  in  luck.  For  two  years  the  fight 
had  raged  with  greater  or  less  fury  among  the 
aldermen;  at  last  they  began  to  waver.  Where 
the  Wabash  had  had  its  enemies  it  began  to 
find  friends,  and  the  adverse  Supreme  Court  de- 
cision had  hardly  cooled  before  a  change  in  the 
Pittsburg  councils'  complexion  gave  the  Wabash 
its  ordinance  so  long  and  stubbornly  held  up,  and 
the  last  legislative  bridge  was  crossed. 

It  was  by  no  means  the  first  time  that  encour- 
agement had  been  extended  to  the  invaders  by 
large  Pittsburg  interests.  In  the  incipiency  of 
the  fray  substantial  promises  of  business  had  been 
made  by  various  Pittsburg  shippers.  The  very 
moment  the  news  of  the  Gould  plans  to  enter  the 
city  became  public,  rumor  asserted  that  the  Car- 
negie Steel  Company  had  already  contracted  to 
give  the  Wabash  twenty-five  per  cent,  of  its 
Western  tonnage.  The  assertion  has  repeatedly 
been  made  and  has  been  repeatedly  denied,  but 
it  is  definitely  known  that  such  a  contract  does 
exist,  though  perhaps  its  importance  in  the  public 
mind  is  somewhat  exaggerated.  It  has  been 
averred  that  the  interests  in  control  of  United 
States  Steel  will  not  abide  by  such  an  agreement ; 
though  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  most  hostile 

109 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

management  could  avoid  it  after  Gould  has  ex- 
pended $25,000,000  to  make  good  his  end  of  the 
compact — courts  are  somewhat  jealous  in  guarding 
questions  of  consideration.  Again,  it  is  hardly 
safe  to  say  who  really  is  in  control  of  United 
States  Steel;  but  aside  from  all  question  of  steel 
control,  the  strategy  of  a  game  of  this  size  is  infi- 
nitely bigger.  It  must  be  considered  that  if  no 
contract  existed,  on  the  day  that  Mr.  Gould  opens 
the  doors  of  his  freight  houses  in  Pittsburg  for 
business  there  lie  behind  them  fifteen  thousand 
miles  of  his  own  rails,  and  that  the  Wabash  will 
call  for  a  reasonable  proportion  of  Pittsburg  ton- 
nage and  command  it.  A  disturbance  of  rates  in 
the  Pittsburg  district  is  not  calmly  to  be  thought 
of  in  the  railroad  world ;  it  would  disturb  Holland 
more  than  a  tidal  wave.  Naturally  the  Penn- 
sylvania Railroad  continues  to  tie  up  every  pos- 
sible source  of  business,  but  when  the  Wabash 
connects  with  the  Union  Railway — the  Carnegie 
local  line  to  various  industries  in  the  district — it 
alone  will  open  up  a  share  of  traffic  that  amounts, 
in  what  were  the  Carnegie  industries,  to  16,000,000 
tons  annually,  while  the  other  industries  the  local 
line  reaches  contribute  enough  business  to  swell 
the  figures  to  40,000,000  tons. 

With  the  Wabash  in  the  Pittsburg  territory 
the  railroad  control  of  all  this  enormous  business 

no 


The  Fight  for  Pittsburg 

and  the  division  of  richest  railroad  territory  in  the 
United  States  becomes  triangular.  The  Vander- 
bilts,  the  Pennsylvania,  and  George  Gould  now 
dominate  and  will  dominate  in  New  York,  Penn- 
sylvania, Delaware,  Maryland,  Ohio,  and  West 
Virginia,  with  powerful  arms  reaching  to  the 
Mississippi  Valley  and  north  and  east  into  New 
England.  It  may  mean  the  closing  of  the  map 
for  centuries;  certainly  in  our  day  the  present 
control  is  likely  to  remain  undisturbed. 


in 


THE  GOULD  LINES 


THE  GOULD  LINES 

IF  there  has  been  during  the  opening  years 
of  the  present  century  a  sensitive  spot  anywhere 
in  the  railroad  situation  of  the  United  States,  it 
may  properly  be  termed  the  Gould  lines. 

Not  a  deep  study  of  railroad  affairs  is  needed 
to  explain  why.  The  Gould  lines  are  young, 
vigorous,  and  aggressive.  The  head  of  the  Gould 
lines  is  said  to  work  much  of  the  time  with  his 
coat  off;  he  is  young  himself  and  not  afraid  of 
draughts.  His  roads,  then,  may  be  said  to  take 
their  cue  from  their  owner;  in  the  railway  world 
the  Gould  lines  work  in  their  shirt  sleeves,  and 
every  once  in  a  while  the  question  bobs  up,  What 
will  they  do  next  *? 

Those  that  picture  the  railroad  magnate  a  man 
of  elegant  leisure  or  of  luxurious  ease  should 
follow  the  owner  of  the  Gould  lines  through  a 
week's  work  at  his  New  York  desk,  or  note  the 
size  of  the  bag  of  papers  he  takes  every  Friday 
night  to  his  country  home,  or  count  the  tele- 
grams that  he  throws  to  an  operator  on  each 
Monday  morning  for  transmission  at  the  various 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

operating  headquarters  on  his  fifteen  thousand 
miles  of  railroad.  Every  road  in  his  system  he 
knows  intimately;  steel  rails  were  his  business 
cradle ;  he  began  railway  management  when  he 
was  fifteen  years  old. 

The  hive  of  the  Gould  lines'  activity  is  the 
old  building  on  lower  Broadway  that  has  housed 
the  Western  Union  for  so  many  years.  Number 
195  Broadway  may  not  stand  for  much  among 
modern  office  buildings,  but  it  stands  for  a  great 
deal  in  the  railway  world,  and,  to  follow  the  figure 
of  the  hive,  it  gives  at  times  uneasy  moments  to 
railway  neighbors,  particularly  when  they  find 
Gould  bees  swarming  in  their  back  yards.  What, 
then,  are  the  Gould  lines?  And  what  do  they 
stand  for*? 

No  railway  combination  in  the  United  States 
is  so  loaded  with  possibilities.  A  glance  at  its 
map  shows  its  stronghold;  it  lies  west  of  the 
Mississippi.  In  the  corn  belt  the  Wabash  ex- 
tends as  far  north  as  Des  Moines  and  Council 
Bluffs  in  Iowa.  The  Missouri  Pacific,  though  it 
pushes  into  only  one  corner  of  Nebraska,  pushes 
into  the  best  corner;  and  in  Kansas  it  doubles 
and  branches  from  end  to  end  of  the  State  until 
its  map  becomes,  in  a  railway  sense,  paramount. 
To  the  Eastern  public  the  Gould  lines  are  hardly 
known.  Even  in  Chicago  they  are  known  only 

116 


The  Gould  Lines 

at  a  distance ;  it  is  when  one  reaches  St.  Louis 
that  the  Gould  lines  are  felt;  in  St.  Louis  they 
are  very  distinctly  in  the  railway  air.  The  Wa- 
bash  shows  strength  in  Illinois,  and  the  Missouri 
Pacific  meets  it  at  the  Mississippi  with  almost  a 
dominant  power  in  Missouri.  From  St.  Louis, 
Gould  lines  run  everywhere  south  and  west. 
They  thread  the  valleys  of  Arkansas,  throw  arms 
like  rivers  from  side  to  side  of  the  State  of  Louisi- 
ana, and  spread  in  a  teeming  delta  far  out  upon 
the  plateaus  of  Texas.  They  lie  under  the  snows 
of  the  forests  of  Michigan  and  they  skirt  the 
parching  heat  of  the  Staked  Plain.  The  Mis- 
souri Pacific  stretching  across  Kansas  to  Colorado 
meets  the  Denver  and  Rio  Grande  at  Pueblo, 
and  crossing  the  Rockies  the  Gould  lines  await 
the  products  of  the  irrigated  valleys  and  climb 
high  into  the  mining  camps  of  Colorado  and 
Utah. 

From  even  so  inadequate  a  sketch  of  their 
Western  strength  some  idea  may  be  had  of  what 
comes  behind  George  Gould  when  he  brings  his 
lines  into  Pittsburg,  for  example.  No  other  rail- 
road power  in  the  United  States  that  looks  to  the 
Atlantic  seaboard  has,  up  to  this  time,  crossed  the 
watershed  of  the  Rockies;  but  George  Gould  is 
already  at  the  Great  Salt  Lake,  and  water  drip- 
ping from  his  rails  finds  its  way  into  the  Gulf 

117 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

of  California.  He  is  at  Leadville  above  the  Ar- 
kansas, and  his  roads  track  the  big  river  clear  to 
its  mouth  and  follow  its  waters  to  New  Orleans. 
From  Omaha  he  tabs  the  Missouri  River  every 
traffic  mile  of  the  way  till  it  mingles  with  the 
Mississippi ;  and  the  Mississippi,  all  the  way  from 
Keokuk  in  Iowa  to  its  mouth,  is  hedged  with 
Gould  roads. 

This  is  what  gives  the  backing  to  the  Gould 
system.  Its  mileage  does  not  mean  the  densest 
traffic,  for  a  division  between  New  York  and 
Philadelphia  may  stand  for  more  business  than  a 
whole  stretch  of  track  across  the  State  of  Texas. 
But  the  history  of  the  Eastern  systems  of  railroads 
is  made ;  that  of  the  Gould  roads  is  in  the  making. 
The  territory  that  the  Eastern  roads  cover  is  de- 
veloped; the  stronghold  of  the  Gould  lines  is  in 
its  infancy.  What,  in  another  generation  and  in 
the  hands  of  an  equally  able  successor,  may  the 
Gould  lines  mean,  when  to-day  in  farthest  Texas 
they  strike,  with  the  Texas  and  Pacific,  the  waters 
of  the  Rio  Grande  at  El  Paso,  find  a  powerful 
Gulf  outlet  at  Galveston,  and  spreading  thence 
north  and  east,  not  in  a  single  track  but  in  doub- 
lings and  battalions  of  tracks,  find  a  harbor  at 
Buffalo  and  a  terminal  at  Pittsburgh 

Nor  is  the  Western  end  of  their  territory  at 
present  the  most  distinctive.  As  far  as  trunk 

118 


The  Gould  Lines 

lines  from  the  Mississippi  Valley  to  the  Atlantic 
seaboard  are  concerned  the  situation  is  so  in  hand, 
the  community  of  interests  between  Mr.  Morgan, 
the  Vanderbilts,  and  the  Pennsylvania  so  perfect, 
and  the  territory  so  covered,  that  new  ventures  in 
that  field  are  to-day,  with  one  exception,  incon- 
ceivable. 

The  exception  is  the  Gould  lines.  Far  down 
in  the  western  extremity  of  Maryland  and  among 
the  northern  passes  of  the  Alleghanies  in  'West 
Virginia  little  lines  may  be  seen  breaking  out 
like  mild  eruptions,  so  to  say,  on  the  railway  map. 
They  spring  up  in  red  streaks  and  patches  after 
morning  telegrams  in  the  New  York  papers 
noting  changes  in  control,  sales  of  short  and 
unimportant  lines  in  that  territory,  and  in  con- 
struction news  concerning  the  leasing  of  coal 
lands.  The  despatches  are  fugitive  and  scattered, 
but  they  have  a  common  significance ;  they  stand 
for  Gould  blazing  his  trail  to  the  Atlantic  sea- 
board. From  Pittsburg  he  is  filling  in  the 
gaps  that  will  put  the  Wabash  into  Baltimore. 
No  cheap  railroad  there  will  serve ;  such  a  line, 
like  the  Pittsburg  extension,  must  be  of  the  best 
twentieth-century  railroad  construction,  for  the 
competition  he  then  pits  himself  against  is  like 
the  white  heat  of  steel  and  as  pitiless.  Leaving 
out  possibilities  not  yet  to  be  discussed  below  the 

119 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

fifth  floor  of  195  Broadway — consider  where  this 
definitely,  and  almost  to-day,  puts  the  Gould  lines : 
At  the  Atlantic  seaboard  with  a  Baltimore  termi- 
nal; at  the  Canadian  boundary  with  a  Buffalo 
terminal ;  at  the  traffic  heart  of  the  United  States 
in  Pittsburg;  in  the  Lake  Superior  country  with 
the  Toledo  and  Ann  Arbor,  where  Gould  car- 
ferries  await  grain  from  the  valley  of  the  Red 
River  of  the  North  and  command  traffic  in  the 
iron  and  copper  countries;  then  in  one  tremen- 
dous sweep  past  New  Orleans  to  Galveston  on 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico;  still  farther  to  the  very 
southernmost  terminal  in  the  United  States,  La- 
redo, Tex.;  and  from  there  to  within  striking 
distance,  at  El  Paso  in  Texas  and  at  Ogden  in 
Utah,  of  the  Pacific  Ocean. 

Certainly,  for  those  that  cherish  the  thought  of 
a  day  that  will  see  one  transcontinental  trunk 
line,  unbroken  in  control,  from  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  to  the  Pacific,  here  is  material  for  dreams. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  timorous,  who  look  with 
alarm  on  the  prospect  of  one-man  control  in 
American  railroads,  will  find  compensation  in  the 
fact  that  for  Mr.  Gould  working-days  cannot  pos- 
sibly grow  forty-eight  hours  long,  and  that  Mr. 
Rockefeller,  his  partner,  is  advanced  in  years. 

But  the  Gould  lines  to-day  stand  actually  for 
so  much  that  speculation  as  to  their  future  may 

1 20 


MENOMINEE^ 


The  Gould  Lines 

be  spared.  They  stand  for  a  line  from  Buffalo  to 
Kansas  City  and  from  Omaha  to  New  Orleans. 
They  stand  for  a  line  from  St.  Louis  to  Ogden 
and  from  Pittsburg  to  El  Paso.  They  stand  for 
a  line,  with  the  Mexican  National,  from  Chicago 
to  the  City  of  Mexico — and  that  the  shortest  line. 
They  stand  for  a  line  from  Denver  to  Pueblo, 
across  Kansas,  through  the  Indian  Territory,  with 
a  wholly  rebuilt,  low-grade  line  down  the  Arkan- 
sas River  and  Valley  to  the  Gulf  ports.  Gould 
lines  are  so  thick  from  St.  Louis  to  the  mouth  of 
the  Mississippi  that,  where  in  the  wisdom  of  rural 
legislators  lines  in  competitive  territory  may  not 
be  officered  by  the  same  people,  it  is  necessary  to 
call  in  outside  talent  to  man  the  executive  staffs, 
and  to  the  natives  the  sanguinary  railroad  spec- 
tacle is  presented  of  Mr.  Edwin  Gould  heading 
one  line  while  Mr.  George  Gould  manages  the 
destinies  of  a  fierce  competitor. 

Here,  then,  is  a  system  of  railways  with  traffic 
possibilities  as  big  almost  as  the  country  itself. 
It  is  not  ideal  as  to  composition;  no  system  that 
has  been  built  up  line  by  line  as  opportunity 
of  purchase  or  lease  offered  can  be.  It  certainly 
is  in  many  portions  far  from  anyone's  ideal  as 
to  physical  condition;  these  are  the  accidents 
of  empire-building  without  unlimited  resources. 
What  should  be  marked  is  that  the  later  addi- 

121 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

tions  to  the  Gould  system  are  of  a  class  wholly 
different  from  the  older  lines.  In  order  to  get 
something  he  does  need  in  the  way  of  a  link 
or  a  feeder,  a  railroad  operator  in  building  up 
often  finds  it  necessary  to  buy  something  he 
does  not  in  the  least  need.  There  are  always 
branches  in  a  railroad  group  that  are  hard  to  fit  in 
anywhere  as  earners,  and  on  which  it  seems  like 
letting  blood  to  spend  money,  and  though  with 
every  tide  of  business  prosperity  in  the  country 
the  railroads  all  get  a  lift,  the  day  for  picking  up 
good  things  on  the  railroad  bargain  counter  has 
largely  gone  by,  and  the  big  operators  to-day  are 
busy  dusting  up  and  polishing  their  antiques. 
What  they  need  now  is  usually  something  that 
cannot  be  bought — lines  to  round  out  adequately 
their  present  holdings  and  to  increase  their  earn- 
ing power.  Such  needs  are  too  definite  to  be 
served  by  picking  up  stray  pieces  of  track,  could 
they  be  had.  The  time  has  come  when  for  these 
purposes  links  or  extensions  must  be  built,  and 
any  railroad  built  to-day  must  be  built  within 
certain  definite  limits  as  to  grades  and  curves, 
or  it  cannot  earn  money.  The  example  of  what 
George  Gould  has  done  in  modern  construction 
in  getting  into  Pittsburg  has  been  widely  dis- 
cussed. In  Pittsburg  last  year  his  chief  of  con- 
struction checked  out  $12,000,000  of  Gould 

122 


The  Gould  Lines 

money,  placed  to  his  private  credit,  so  fast  that 
he  felt  a  personal  shock  in  the  celerity  of  the 
operation.  While  this  was  going  on,  Gould  funds 
were  being  poured  out  in  a  stream  west  of  the 
Mississippi.  To  avoid  the  terminal  crush  at  St. 
Louis,  Gould  is  completing  from  East  St.  Louis 
a  new  line  to  the  Gulf  with  maximum  grades  of 
three-tenths  per  cent.,  easy  curves,  and  an  eighty- 
five-pound  rail.  This  means  St.  Louis  to  New 
Orleans  and  Galveston,  and  with  the  strongest 
line  in  the  field. 

Down  the  valley  of  the  Arkansas,  millions  of 
dollars  have  been  spent  in  rebuilding  completely 
the  track  in  the  Little  Rock  and  Fort  Smith  terri- 
tory, making  it  low-grade  and  equipping  it  for 
the  exactions  of  heavy  tonnage  to  strengthen  the 
big  links  from  the  Rockies  to  the  Gulf.  From 
the  Ozarks  in  Missouri,  Mr.  Gould  is  building 
down  the  White  River  another  low-grade  line 
that  will  not  only  supply  the  shortest  line  from 
Kansas  City  and  Missouri  River  points  to  Mem- 
phis and  New  Orleans  but  will  open  up  a  new 
territory  described  as  "magnificent." 

In  the  building  up  of  any  great  system  of  rail- 
ways ambition  may  to  a  certain  point  be  the  chief 
factor;  beyond  that  it  becomes  self-preservation. 
The  acquiring  of  additional  lines  is  in  the  end  a 
necessity  to  provide  outlets  for  traffic  originating 

123 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

in  one's  own  territory  or  to  secure  feeders  that  will 
supply  material  needed  by  the  territory's  industries. 
Railroad  operators  are  forced  at  times  to  take  over 
competing  lines  that  assume  the  attitude  of  black- 
mailers ;  roads  have  been  built  with  precisely  such 
ends  in  view.  In  this  way  any  system  is  liable  to 
acquire  more  or  less  dead  wood,  the  only  salvation 
for  such  investments  lying  in  the  ever-growing 
needs  of  the  country  for  transportation  facilities, 
so  that  ultimately  the  least  useful  division  takes 
its  place  acceptably  in  the  activities  of  the  system. 

In  this  way,  too,  it  is  a  fact,  and  at  times  a 
serious  one,  that  there  comes  about  in  railroad 
consolidation  a  wasteful  competition  between  dif- 
ferent lines  belonging  to  the  same  interests.  The 
view  here  taken  assumes  nothing  more  than  that 
public  interests  require  not  only  reasonable  rates 
but  stable  rates,  and  when,  whether  through  secret 
rebates  or  the  reduction  of  an  open  tariff  to  a  point 
below  a  legitimate  operating  profit,  a  road  cannot 
make  money,  it  is  in  the  end  the  public  that  suf- 
fers. 

Of  equal  disadvantage  to  public  interests  is  the 
policy  sometimes  followed  by  the  traffic  manager 
of  a  small  line  in  a  system,  who,  in  order  to  make 
a  showing  for  his  own  road,  so  refuses  to  inter- 
change traffic  with  foreign  lines  as  to  be  in  a  state 
of  war  with  his  neighbors.  He  may,  for  instance, 

124 


The  Gould  Lines 

refuse  to  let  traffic  go  off  his  line  save  by  the 
longest  way,  making  prohibitive  rates  the  short 
way,  thus  delaying  traffic  movement  if  nothing 
worse.  He  may  in  this  manner  make  the  whole 
system  of  which  he  is  a  small  part  suffer  even 
in  the  interchange  of  traffic  between  component 
lines.  Few  systems  have  not  felt  the  waste  and 
disadvantage  caused  by  the  tendency  of  each 
manager  to  consult  his  own  interests  and  let  the 
system  look  out  for  itself.  A  system  so  situated 
becomes  a  house  divided  against  itself;  stock- 
holders suffer  in  earnings  and  shippers'  interests 
suffer  through  neglect,  because  every  economy  in 
operating  expense  and  in  time  tends  ultimately 
to  benefit  the  public. 

To  meet  this  difficulty  and  to  insure  internal 
harmony  in  the  affairs  of  the  different  American 
railroad  combinations  a  new  American  railroad 
official  has  been  called  into  being.  He  is  so  new 
that  as  yet  no  quite  satisfactory  title  has  been 
found  for  him,  but  such  men  may  be  termed  chief 
traffic  officers;  in  this  capacity  Mr.  Bird  serves 
the  Gould  lines,  Mr.  Darius  Miller,  the  Hill  lines, 
Mr.  Stubbs,  the  Harriman  lines.  Their  official 
titles  may  vary  somewhat ;  Mr.  Bird  is  vice-pres- 
ident of  the  Gould  lines,  Mr.  Miller  is  vice- 
president  of  the  Burlington  road,  and  Mr.  Stubbs 
is  traffic  director  of  the  Harriman  lines. 

125 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Heading  the  departments  of  traffic,  they  may  all 
be  termed  traffic  directors.  As  to  their  authority, 
they  are  actually  traffic  presidents,  in  that  their 
powers,  as  arbiters  of  traffic  between  the  various 
lines  in  their  combinations  as  well  as  over  all,  are 
plenary.  In  the  judicial  aspect  of  their  railroad 
systems  they  are  traffic  supreme  courts,  umpires 
from  whose  word  there  lies  practically  no  appeal, 
or  from  whom  an  appeal  if  lodged  must  lie 
directly  with  Mr.  Gould,  Mr.  Harriman,  or  Mr. 
Hill.  ' 

The  authority  of  a  man  so  placed  is  of  extra- 
ordinary scope.  Upon  his  dictates  depends  the 
entire  income  of  his  system.  Nor  is  his  system 
the  only  party  with  vital  interests  lodged  in  his 
hands,  for  it  comes  almost  as  a  shock  to  reflect 
that  to-day — if  we  include  the  traffic  officers  of  the 
Santa  Fe  and  of  the  Rock  Island  lines — it  may  be 
said  that  in  the  whole  vast  territory  west  of  the 
Missouri  River  the  making  and  unmaking  of 
every  rate  is  in  the  hands  of  five  men.  Consid- 
ered rightly,  however,  rather  than  being  an  occa- 
sion for  alarm,  this  is  a  substantial  guarantee  to  the 
shipping  interests  of  that  territory  that  not  only 
reasonable  but  stable  rates  will  prevail.  With 
this  nearest  approach  to  one-man  power  in  trans- 
Missouri  territory  that  will  probably  be  seen  in 
this  generation  there  still  remains  so  great  a  diver- 

126 


The  Gould  Lines 

sity  of  interests  between  the  roads  themselves,  as 
well  as  the  territories  they  serve,  that  very  keen 
though  conservative  and  businesslike  competition 
must  long  continue  to  exist  as  it  does  to-day; 
and  people  of  Washington  and  Oregon  will  know 
that  they  have  in  Mr.  Hill  a  vigilant  railroad 
operator  to  look  out  for  their  traffic  development, 
while  Southern  California  will  realize  that  the 
Santa  Fe  and  the  Gould  and  the  Harriman  lines 
will  not  let  them  suffer  in  the  struggle  to  secure 
their  share  of  national  commerce.  Shippers  under 
such  a  congress  of  traffic  chiefs  are  safer  than  they 
would  be  under  twenty-five  traffic  managers  oper- 
ating for  periods  by  means  of  secret  manipulations 
and  breaking  at  other  times  into  open  rate  wars. 

In  the  work  of  these  traffic  officers,  lie  require- 
ments of  the  highest  intelligence,  the  widest  ac- 
quaintance with  public  need,  and  the  broadest 
views  on  questions  of  transportation  and  the  de- 
velopment of  local  industries.  To  the  traffic 
chief  his  system  must  look  for  elimination  of 
waste,  whether  of  time  in  the  best  routing  of  traf- 
fic or  of  money  in  unnecessary  transfers  and  re- 
handling.  He  must  determine  when  a  rate  re- 
duction becomes  profitable  and  when  an  advance 
becomes  necessary.  Before  him  must  be  adjusted 
the  rival  contentions  of  subordinate  managers  in 
his  own  railway  family,  and  he  must  keep  his 

127 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

group  of  roads  as  a  unit  on  terms  of  fair  dealing 
with  foreign  roads. 

The  results  already  shown  in  this  idea  of  unify- 
ing traffic  management  are  material.  In  the  mat- 
ter of  interchange  of  loaded  cars  alone,  between 
connecting  lines  of  a  system,  the  new  plan  of 
management  has  more  than  justified  itself.  When 
a  road  in  a  system  allows  its  loaded  cars  to  go  unre- 
servedly to  other  roads  under  the  same  ownership 
the  record  is  usually  that  they  go  to  a  "  grave- 
yard." On  the  Gould  lines  the  Missouri  Pacific, 
under  the  old  traffic  conditions,  unloaded  its  east- 
bound  cars  as  a  measure  of  self-defence  at  its  St. 
Louis  terminal  and  the  Wabash  reloaded  the 
through  freight  there  into  its  own  cars.  This 
entailed  an  expense  of  $2  on  every  car  of  freight 
rehandled.  It  is  frequently  assumed  that  because 
such  a  charge  is  absorbed  by  the  railways  this 
costs  the  shipper  nothing;  this  is  not  true,  but 
of  greater  consequence  is  the  delay  that  the  re- 
handling  involves  at  overcrowded  terminals.  This 
and  like  wastes  of  time,  labor,  and  money  it  is  the 
business  of  a  traffic  chief  to  do  away  with. 

To  take  an  example,  not  because  especially 
noteworthy  in  magnitude  or  novelty  but  because 
it  is  explicit  in  the  interchange  of  traffic  on  one 
railway  system,  the  two  roads  last  named  inter- 
changed on  the  twelfth  of  November,  1903,  1,277 

128 


The  Gould  Lines 

loaded  cars.  The  transferring  of  the  freight  being 
done  away  with,  those  1,277  loads  wholly  escaped 
the  deadly  delays  of  terminal  warehouse  handling 
and  were  sent  by  a  belt  line  as  originally  loaded 
from  the  one  road  to  the  other.  Nor  did  the  car 
equipment  of  either  road  suffer  in  the  operation. 
By  the  simple  clearing-house  expedient  of  com- 
pelling each  road  to  make  good  every  day  its 
debit  balance  of  cars,  loaded  or  empty,  the  equip- 
ment of  each  is  kept  at  all  times  unimpaired.  If 
the  Wabash  receives  a  thousand  loaded  cars  from 
the  Missouri  Pacific  it  must  surrender  that  day  in 
return  one  thousand  loads  or  empties.  On  the  day 
instanced  the  transfer  of  1,277  cars  between  only 
two  lines  of  one  system  saved  an  unnecessary  re- 
loading expense  of  $2,554.  Applied  to  one  day's 
freight  transfers  over  all  the  United  States  the 
sum  involved  would  be  enormous;  but  this  is 
only  one  of  many  ways  in  which  a  director  of 
traffic  makes  himself  felt.  He  sometimes  finds 
one  of  his  small  lines  routing  freight  in  a  round- 
about and  slow  way  in  order  to  get  the  whole 
haul;  but  a  chief  traffic  officer  with  more  judg- 
ment requires  that  freight  shall  go  by  the  quick- 
est route  and,  in  not  unknown  instances,  even 
when  this  means  that  a  portion  of  the  haul  must 
be  given  to  a  foreign  line.  Prompt  service  is  put 
first. 

1129 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Such  instances  afford  a  glimpse  of  a  broader 
viewpoint  in  railway  management — a  viewpoint 
better  in  the  end  for  stockholders  and  owners  as 
well  as  for  public  interests — that  is  making  itself 
everywhere  felt  in  railway  affairs  in  this  country. 
The  evolution  of  good  railway  management  has 
seemed  slow  and  has  been  attended  by  many 
abuses — though  not  more  than  have  accompanied 
the  development  of  any  great  modem  institution, 
industrial  or  political.  To-day  there  is  less  abuse 
in  railway  management  than  there  has  been  in 
the  history  of  railroading,  and  the  elimination  of 
much  of  it  has  been  made  possible  only  by  mak- 
ing the  systems  bigger  as  the  country  grows  big- 
ger. Railway  men  realise  that  their  properties 
are  always  at  the  mercy  of  the  people.  Public 
interests  may  always  be  safeguarded  at  Washing- 
ton by  intelligent  Federal  legislation ;  all  that  rail- 
road men  ask  is  that  it  be  intelligent.  At  present 
the  traffic  officer  who  makes  the  rates  finds  himself 
hampered  by  enactments,  State  and  Federal,  so 
contradictory  that  they  make  it  difficult  to  do  jus- 
tice to  any  interest. 

It  is  not  always,  it  should  be  marked,  the  rais- 
ing of  a  rate  that  makes  trouble ;  the  lowering  of 
one  is  frequently  productive,  in  disturbing  the 
delicate  adjustment  of  traffic  movement,  of  no 
end  of  trouble.  Shippers,  however,  are  getting 

130 


The  Gould  Lines 

closer  to  railways  in  reconciling  differences  of 
opinion  between  them;  they  are  learning  that 
nothing  is  less  satisfactory  than  a  traffic  lawsuit. 
Between  the  man  that  sells  transportation  and 
the  man  that  buys  there  will  naturally  arise  differ- 
ences in  view.  The  railways  in  the  Northwest  at 
one  time  reduced  the  seaboard  rates  on  grain 
till  Northwestern  millers  saw  the  ruin  of  their 
flour  business  impending.  They  determined  to 
fight  for  their  existence  as  millers  and  appealed 
to  a  great  traffic  expert  on  the  Vanderbilt  lines, 
Grammer,  of  the  Lake  Shore,  to  help  them  get  up 
their  case  for  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commis- 
sion. Captain  Grammer  heard  attentively  and 
answered  with  a  suggestion.  He  instanced  the 
famous  hay  cases  before  the  Commission,  the  un- 
ending wrangle  and  delay,  and  said  :  "  Why  not 
prepare  your  case  and  appeal  with  it  not  to  a  Fed- 
eral tribunal  but  directly  to  your  railroads  them- 
selves? And  I  will  help  you  to  draw  your 
briefs."  They  saw  the  advice  was  good  and  took 
it,  and  were  rewarded  with  a  satisfactory  adjust- 
ment of  their  difficulties. 

The  matter,  too,  of  raising  a  traffic  rate,  even 
when  circumstances  equitably  and  justly  call  for 
such  action,  has  become  well-nigh  impracticable, 
and  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  has 
come  to  believe  that  the  sole  reason  for  its  exist- 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

ence  is  to  lower  rates.  Under  such  conditions  a 
traffic  officer  will  not  undertake  the  responsibility 
of  lowering  a  rate,  even  when  he  feels  it  might 
safely  be  done,  because  he  knows  that  once  put 
down — to  relieve  a  situation  or  develop  a  new  in- 
dustry— he  should  never  be  able  to  restore  it. 

In  the  face  of  such  conditions  everything  that 
railways  buy,  whether  of  labour  or  equipment,  has 
within  five  years  materially  increased  in  cost, 
while  rates  have  not  kept  pace  with  the  ad- 
vances. All  ingenuity  in  traffic  management  is 
thus  reduced  to  economy  in  distributing  and  col- 
lecting commodity  movement. 

However,  the  very  difficulties  with  which  rail- 
ways are  to-day  beset  serve,  it  would  appear,  to 
bring  out  capability,  ingenuity,  and  resource,  and 
in  all  the  activities  of  the  every-day  movement  to 
these  ends  the  Gould  lines,  in  their  shirt-sleeves, 
are  markedly  busy. 


THE   ROCK   ISLAND   SYSTEM 


THE   ROCK   ISLAND   SYSTEM 

WHEN  the  United  States  is  reproached  for 
shutting  out  foreign  trade  with  a  tariff  wall,  pro- 
tectionists reply  that,  since  the  country  contains 
in  itself  all  natural  resources,  it  needs  no  foreign 
trade.  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  argu- 
ment it  must  be  conceded  that  a  nation  so  situ- 
ated is  uncommonly  lucky. 

The  Rock  Island  System,  including,  as  it 
does,  the  Chicago  and  Eastern  Illinois  Road  and 
the  'Frisco  System,  may  be  said  to  constitute 
with  its  territory  a  railroad  principality,  and  one 
which  actually  does  somewhat  approach  the  in- 
dustrial independence  claimed  for  the  nation. 

The  Rock  Island,  for  instance,  serves  more  towns 
of  25,000  people  than  any  other  Western  road, 
and  this  gives  it  an  urban  standing.  It  might 
easily  pose,  too,  as  an  agricultural  road.  A  road 
strong  in  a  wheat  belt  is  said  to  be  well  in- 
trenched. But  what  shall  be  said  of  a  road 
whose  wheat  belt  is  bounded  on  the  north  by 
Canada,  on  the  south  by  Mexico,  on  the  west  by 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  on  the  east  by  Ohio  *? 

135 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

In  the  United  States  lies  a  pretty  strictly  de- 
fined corn  belt.  It  is  known  as  one  of  the  richest 
agricultural  regions  in  the  world.  Every  railroad 
within  the  corn  belt  is  rich,  and  the  Rock  Island 
lines  are  in  the  heart  of  it.  That  group  of  rail- 
roads in  the  Middle  Northwest  known  before 
recent  consolidations  as  the  Granger  lines  has 
long  been  uniformly  prosperous;  but  to-day,  of 
all  that  group,  only  the  Rock  Island  is  able  to 
carry  export  corn  and  wheat  either  to  the  Gulf 
over  its  own  rails,  or  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard 
through  its  Chicago  gateway;  it  is  at  Chicago 
and  within  striking  distance  of  Galveston.  A 
third  field  product  of  primary  importance  remains 
— cotton;  and  the  Rock  Island  is  a  cotton  road. 
Fourteen  States  share  in  the  production  of  this 
crop,  which  ranks  second  among  all  of  our  agri- 
cultural resources.  Of  these  States,  nine  are  served 
by  the  Rock  Island  lines. 

What  is  still  more  unusual,  one  traffic  territory 
served  by  the  Rock  Island,  and  somewhat  vaguely 
termed  the  new  Southwest,  depends  neither  on 
corn,  nor  wheat,  nor  cotton  alone.  It  enjoys  a 
climate  and  a  soil  so  patient  of  all  of  these  crops 
that  the  farmer  may  plant,  indifferently,  which 
he  pleases :  cotton,  or  corn,  or  wheat. 

The  strength  of  a  road  drawing  its  traffic  from 
all  of  our  great  agricultural  districts  is  obvious. 

136 


The  Rock  Island   System 

Railroads  of  the  farther  Northwest  depend  on  a 
wheat  crop.  But  the  Rock  Island  may  view  with 
less  alarm  the  failure  of  a  wheat  crop,  or  of  any 
one  of  our  three  greatest  crops,  because  it  still  has 
the  other  two  to  depend  on. 

Last  year  seventy  per  cent,  of  the  total  grain 
crop  of  the  country  was  raised  in  Rock  Island 
System  States.  Sixty  per  cent.,  or  2,000,000  car- 
loads, was  raised  in  eleven  States  shipping  largely 
by  Rock  Island  lines.  Fifty-five  per  cent,  was 
raised  west  of  the  Mississippi  River. 

The  Rock  Island  brings  cattle  from  the  farms 
and  ranges  of  its  own  territory  to  the  packing 
centres  of  the  country,  reaching  all  of  them,  and 
when  it  markets  the  cotton  of  its  Southern  farmer 
it  brings  to  him  his  meat  grown  and  packed  on 
its  own  lines.  This  very  packing-house  product 
is  crated  and  boxed  in  wood  cut  on  Rock  Island 
lines  and  carried  north  by  the  Rock  Island.  The 
system  reaches  the  only  considerable  timber  sup- 
ply, save  that  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  now  left  in 
the  United  States.  It  penetrates  not  alone  the 
Southern  pine  districts,  but  reaches  the  magnif- 
icent hardwood  reserves  of  the  Southwest,  in- 
cluding the  oak  of  Arkansas  and  the  walnut  of 
the  Indian  Territory.  Texas  does  not  pose  as  a 
timber  country,  yet  the  timber  lands  of  this  State 
cover  an  area  larger  than  the  State  of  Indiana. 

137 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

In  Alabama  the  Rock  Island  is  at  Birmingham, 
which  means  a  terminal  in  an  American  iron  and 
steel  district  second  only  to  Pittsburg.  As  to 
precious  metals,  Rock  Island  lines  are  in  Colo- 
rado, and  they  reach  the  smelters  of  Denver, 
Pueblo,  Omaha,  Kansas  City,  and  El  Paso.  In 
lead  the  Rock  Island  is  even  more  fortunate, 
for,  with  its  'Frisco  System,  it  is,  in  the  Joplin, 
Mo.,  district,  paramount. 

These  are  certainly  claims  to  distinction,  but 
they  do  not  exhaust  the  Rock  Island  list.  It  not 
only  reaches  and  supplies  all  great  manufactur- 
ing centres  of  the  Middle  West  with  raw  ma- 
terial, but  it  distributes  their  wares  over  15,000 
miles  of  railroad  in  consuming  territory.  At 
Moline  and  at  Rock  Island,  111.,  are  manu- 
factories of  agricultural  implements  among  the 
most  extensive  in  the  country ;  they  are  very 
particularly  Rock  Island  System  industries.  Kan- 
sas City,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  greatest  dis- 
tributing centre  for  agricultural  implements  in 
the  whole  world,  and  it  is  a  principal  terminal  of 
both  the  big  roads  of  the  Rock  Island  System. 
In  the  southwestern  part  of  Missouri  and  the 
northwestern  part  of  Arkansas  lies  a  region  espe- 
cially favoured  by  Providence  in  the  temper  of 
its  soil  and  climate.  It  is  known  as  the  Ozark 
Plateau.  Fruit  should  not  ordinarily  be  expected, 

138 


The  Rock  Island  System 

outside  California,  to  interest  a  large  railroad 
system.  But  Missouri  is  the  home  of  the  big, 
red  apple,  and  of  these  it  supplies  thousands  of 
car-loads  to  the  Rock  Island.  Niagara  County, 
N.  Y.,  boasts  924,086  apple-trees,  and  in  the 
whole  United  States  there  is  no  record  to  ap- 
proach this  except  in  Washington  County,  Ark., 
where  there  were  at  the  same  time — 1900 — 
1,555,000  apple-trees;  and  Washington  County 
has  planted  half  a  million  apple-trees  since  then. 
The  lesser  fruits  figure  more  in  the  traffic  of  the 
express  companies,  but  peaches  from  the  Ozark 
Plateau  supply  more  than  one  thousand  cars  of 
freight  every  year  to  this  railroad.  The  modest 
strawberry  reddens  in  the  winter  sun  at  the  south- 
ernmost corner  of  this  delightful  district.  Begin- 
ning there,  the  Rock  Island  picks  it  up  as  the 
season  advances,  all  the  way  up  the  line  for  the 
northern  markets,  and,  incredible  as  it  may  seem, 
the  Ozark  strawberry,  in  addition  to  an  enor- 
mous express  business,  supplies  annually  hundreds 
of  carloads  as  freight. 

A  last  natural  product  vital  to  the  prosperity 
of  an  American  railroad  remains,  and  to  its  abun- 
dance of  riches  the  Rock  Island  adds  a  wealth  of 
coal  territory  which,  in  extent  and  distribution,  is 
unusual.  One  of  its  new  lines,  the  Chicago  and 
Eastern  Illinois,  is  distinctively  a  coal  road,  and 

139 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

when  it  is  considered  that  the  coal  fields  of  Colo- 
rado, Kansas,  Missouri,  the  Indian  Territory, 
and  Alabama  are  all  reached  by  the  Rock  Is- 
land, a  strong  position  in  coal  resources  will  be 
granted  it. 

Considered,  then,  as  a  combination  of  railroads 
joined  into  one  system  for  industrial  independence, 
the  Rock  Island  lines  present  a  front  that  is 
formidable.  A  traffic  pre-eminence  can  hardly 
be  denied  to  so  considerable  a  factor  among 
Western  railroads  when  once  its  plans  are  realised. 
It  is  to-day  that  these  are  being  shaped.  The 
Rock  Island  is  an  infant  among  American  rail- 
way systems,  but  it  is  regarded  as  a  fairly  vigor- 
ous one,  and,  with  its  career  worked  out  under 
wise  counsels,  no  traffic  property  in  the  country 
should  have  a  more  enviable  future.  It  is  only 
fair  to  say  that  the  promise  of  this  already  shows 
forth  in  the  dispositions  made  for  executive  au- 
thority. The  Rock  Island  is  purely  a  Western 
road,  if  by  this  may  be  understood  that  it  is  a 
Southwestern,  a  Northwestern,  and  a  Southern 
road.  It  is  Western  as  opposed  to  lines  within 
its  territory  that  seek  for,  or  enjoy,  an  Atlantic 
seaboard  terminal.  The  Eastern  terminal  horizon 
of  the  Rock  Island  is  definitely  bounded  by 
Chicago,  where  it  maintains  relations  with  all 
Eastern  trunk  lines.  West  of  Chicago,  however, 

140 


The  Rock  Island  System 

the  Rock  Island  is  practically  everywhere  east  of 
Wyoming  and  the  Rio  Grande  River.  As  if  to 
emphasise  its  Western  completeness  it  is  building 
now  into  New  Orleans,  spending  there  $2,000,- 
ooo  for  terminals,  and  in  these  providing  not  alone 
for  city  business  but,  what  is  of  more  importance, 
for  imports  and  exports.  Anticipating  the  needs 
of  five  hundred  years,  it  has  acquired  three  miles 
of  river  frontage  for  its  docks  and  warehouses, 
but  of  this  abundant  holding  six  thousand  feet 
will  take  care  of  the  needs  of  the  present  genera- 
tion of  traffic  managers,  who  will  direct  Rock 
Island  traffic  to  Galveston,  New  Orleans,  or  Chi- 
cago as  conditions  imply.  The  completion,  too, 
of  the  'Frisco  line  from  St.  Louis  into  New  Or- 
Jeans  will  witness  the  completion  of  the  longest 
low-grade  railroad  line  in  the  United  States,  being 
nowhere  above  eleven  feet  to  the  mile. 

A  road  so  Western  in  its  territorial  strategy  is 
naturally  managed  wholly  in  the  West.  West- 
ern railroad  men  are  in  themselves  a  tower  of 
strength.  They  stand  for  decision,  action,  and 
organisation.  They  are  indefatigable,  construc- 
tive, and,  above  all,  resourceful,  and  to  them 
America  owes  so  much  of  its  present  excellence, 
notable  the  world  over,  in  affairs  of  transportation, 
that  the  only  danger  in  paying  them  too  strong  a 
tribute  is  lest  it  should  seem  to  rob  Eastern  rail- 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

road  men  somewhat  of  their  own  high  due.  It 
is,  however,  undoubtedly  true  that  poverty  of  ma- 
terial resources  aids  in  the  overcoming  of  difficul- 
ties. It  stimulates  mental  ingenuity,  and  the 
Western  railroad  man  has  had  the  inestimable 
advantage  of  a  stern  frontier  school.  The  oper- 
ating and  executive  staff  of  the  Rock  Island  is  as 
markedly  Western  as  its  lines.  Mr.  Winchell, 
the  president  of  the  Chicago,  Rock  Island,  and 
Pacific  Railway,  who  finds  himself  at  less  than 
forty-six  under  so  particular  an  executive  re- 
sponsibility, has  behind  him  a  Western  record 
as  continuous  and  rounded  as  that  of  most  railroad 
veterans  of  sixty.  Outside  the  motive  power  it 
would  be  difficult  to  name  a  single  department  of 
the  road  of  which  he  is  chief  into  which  he  could 
not  step  and  perform  with  ease  the  duties  of  the 
head.  Neither  the  auditing,  the  passenger  de- 
partment, the  freight  traffic,  nor  the  operating 
would  present  serious  difficulties  to  the  president, 
since  he  has  built  up  each  of  such  branches  on 
several  different  Western  roads,  and  the  most  im- 
portant of  them  on  the  system  he  now  heads. 

Within  only  the  last  ten  years  he  has  been  gen- 
eral passenger  and  ticket  agent  of  the  Union 
Pacific,  Denver  and  Gulf,  and  of  the  'Frisco  road 
as  well,  vice-president  and  traffic  manager  of  the 
Colorado  and  Southern,  president  of  the  Kansas 

142 


The  Rock  Island  System 

City,  Fort  Scott  and  Memphis,  vice-president  of 
the  'Frisco  System,  and  lastly  and  at  once,  first 
vice-president  of  the  'Frisco,  of  the  Chicago  and 
Eastern  Illinois,  the  Evansville  and  Terre  Haute, 
and  third  vice-president  of  the  Chicago,  Rock 
Island  and  Pacific  Railway,  in  charge  both  of  the 
operating  and  the  traffic. 

To  carry  the  load  implied  in  positions  so  ex- 
acting as  these  indicates  extraordinary  facility  in 
despatching  work,  and  the  men  Mr.  Winchell  is 
drawing  around  him  are  much  of  this  type  :  men 
neither  young  nor  old,  but  at  the  best  of  their  ex- 
ecutive power.  Thus,  one  of  the  heads  of  Mr. 
Winchell's  staff  is  a  little  younger  than  himself; 
a  second  has  just  turned  forty,  while  the  general 
superintendents  are  in  their  prime. 

On  these  men  falls  the  responsibility  for  the 
building  up  of  the  Rock  Island  System,  and  no 
railroad  work,  in  all  of  the  newer  dispositions  of 
railroad  management  and  control,  will  involve 
more  hard  thinking  or  call  for  a  heavier  expendi- 
ture of  vital  energy  on  the  part  of  a  few  men. 

In  the  first  place,  the  operating  problems  are 
momentous.  A  curious  statistician  has  figured 
out  that  a  union  labour  president  of  the  Rock 
Island  System  travelling  eight  hours  a  day  on  a 
fast  train  would  need  all  of  sixty  days  to  ride  over 
his  road,  not  to  consider  stopping  for  inspection ; 

143 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

but  railroad  presidents,  not  yet  having  formed  a 
union,  work  sixteen  hours  a  day,  and  could,  there- 
fore, make  the  trip  in  less.  However,  it  would 
be  obviously  impossible  for  any  single  set  of  oper- 
ating officials  to  get  the  best  results  in  handling 
so  extended  a  mileage,  and  the  two  chief  constit- 
uent lines  of  the  system,  that  is  to  say,  the 
Chicago,  Rock  Island  and  Pacific  Railway  and 
the  'Frisco  System,  are  likely  to  be  co-ordinated 
in  operating  rather  than  merged.  In  the  hand- 
ling of  large  properties  railroad  practice  has  al- 
ready found  the  limit  beyond  which  it  is  not  wise 
to  extend  the  work  of  a  single  executive  staff. 
If  the  seat  of  an  authority  be  too  many  miles  from 
the  point  of  appeal  on  questions  that  call  for 
prompt  answer,  efficiency  becomes  impaired.  The 
railroad  is  no  longer  sensitively  in  touch  with  its 
customers ;  the  opportunity  to  make  the  road  re- 
spond to  every  profitable  suggestion  from  shipper 
or  superintendent  is  lost,  and  with  it  the  highest 
development  of  local  traffic. 

But  in  this  co-ordinating,  this  unifying,  this 
assembling  into  a  working  machine  of  the  crude 
materials  of  a  railroad  system  lies  a  labour  of  in- 
finite pains.  It  is  not  like  the  building  of  one 
engine  after  the  pattern  of  another,  for  each  rail- 
road system  presents,  in  forming,  unique  difficul- 
ties, and  the  builders  of  the  newer  can  only  choose 

144 


5     O      U      T      H 


W    Y     O     M     I      N     G 


NEBRASKA 


THK    ROCK. 


1»»HNE*p0^ 
I  N  N 


k**^W*      I       S     C      O      N      S      I/N 

i  Vvtr-'  H 


*v» 


# 


^ 


:&*> 


^WPiD^Ot*  ' 


w 


^ 


^ 


rlmi 


,  S 


•*# 


-*<*>» 


\villc. 


¥errf-( 


K    V 


MEMPHIS 


\\ 


^ 


BIRM 


<o 


L  &   U    \   5    I    /\   N  ^ 


!   M)    SYSTEM. 


The  Rock  Island  System 

from  the  experience  of  the  earlier  what  they  deem 
suited  to  their  peculiar  needs. 

The  older  Rock  Island  lines  present  work  for 
the  engineering  department.  No  road  represent- 
ing physically  the  average  conditions  of  a  few 
years  ago  can  hope  for  a  place  in  the  first  rank  of 
traffic  to-day,  and  that  the  new  Rock  Island  peo- 
ple understand  this  is  shown  in  their  moves  toward 
betterment.  These  necessities,  however,  must  be 
met  gradually,  and  here,  too,  a  nice  judgment  is 
needed.  What  may  be  taken  by  the  Rock  Island 
public  as  a  token  of  the  present  policy  is  best 
shown  in  the  new  construction.  The  system  is 
now  filling  in  two  links  between  important  ter- 
minals, one  from  Chicago  to  St.  Louis  and  one 
from  St.  Louis  to  Kansas  City.  The  Chicago- 
St.  Louis  line  is  to  be  double-tracked  eighty  per 
cent,  of  the  way,  and  though  the  St.  Louis-Kansas 
City  line  runs  through  a  rougher  country  than  any 
road  between  the  points  named,  it  shows  lighter 
grades  and  curvature  than  any  existing  line.  In 
this  new  track-building,  wood,  with  the  exception 
of  ties,  has  been  completely  eliminated.  Bridges 
and  culverts  are  of  steel  and  concrete,  the  aim 
being  to  put  the  new  road  at  once  in  advance  of 
any  present  competition. 

This  much  of  the  parent  line.  As  to  the 
'Frisco,  it  being,  in  a  way,  a  Southern  road,  one 

145 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

expects  less  of  it;  yet  it  shows,  somewhat  as  a 
surprise,  in  the  getting  of  traffic,  in  immigration 
seeking,  and  in  public  service,  an  aggressiveness 
which  older  lines  may  be  glad  to  follow.  The 
'Frisco  runs  fully  equipped  passenger  trains  be- 
tween St.  Louis  and  Fort  Worth  and  between 
Kansas  City  and  Birmingham  such  as  need  fear 
no  comparison  with  the  limited  trains  of  the 
North.  They  are  really  years  ahead  of  the  neces- 
sities, but  they  are  substantial  aids  toward  the 
good  will  of  the  public  that  the  road  serves. 

As  to  the  system  as  a  whole,  the  injecting  of 
so  much  fresh  blood  into  it  within  two  years  has 
naturally  resulted  in  all  manner  of  experiments. 
Not  all  of  these  represent  final  excellence ;  it  is  a 
matter  of  selection  and  rejection.  But  in  the  main 
they  present  the  spectacle  of  the  most  conserva- 
tive road  in  the  West,  so  conservative  that  it  has 
borne  the  reproach  of  being  old-fashioned,  being 
transformed  into  a  road  thoroughly  up  to  date  in 
its  methods  of  securing  and  handling  traffic.  Not 
the  least  interesting  point  in  these  advanced  ideas, 
and  one  that  shows  extraordinary  results  in  the 
building  of  new  States  and  Territories,  is  the 
wholly  new  method  in  the  passenger  department 
for  attracting  travel  and  immigration. 

The  department  in  the  beginning  stimulates 
inquiry  by  entering  the  lists  as  an  advertiser,  and 

146 


The  Rock  Island  System 

not  as  a  conventional  advertiser  but  as  a  bold  and 
striking  one.  It  makes  its  own  every  resource  in 
the  Yankee  art  of  publicity,  and,  having  attracted 
its  audience,  handles  it  with  the  tact  of  a  mail- 
order house.  It  establishes,  in  fact,  a  mail-order 
branch  in  railroad  administration.  The  old  rail- 
road way  of  sending  to  an  inquirer  merely  adver- 
tising matter  or  a  letter  has  been  supplanted  by 
the  "  follow-up  "  idea,  and  the  Rock  Island  plans 
for  getting  results  are  almost  as  exact  as  the  cost 
sheets  of  a  manufacturer  turning  out  a  large  prod- 
uct on  a  narrow  margin  of  profit.  Such  a  plan 
costs  more,  but  it  brings  extraordinary  results,  and 
it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that,  at  the  moment,  the 
Rock  Island  sets  a  pace  in  publicity  efforts  for 
every  railroad  that  has  need  to  build  up  its  terri- 
tory with  families  and  farms  and  towns.  To 
direct  the  tide  of  immigration  in  this  country 
toward  any  particular  section  of  it  is  an  under- 
taking calling  for  much  time  and  money;  and 
that  a  single  railroad  system  should  have  suc- 
ceeded in  attracting  within  less  than  a  year  so 
much  attention  to  the  Southwest  must  be  gratify- 
ing to  every  road  in  that  territory,  since  all  share, 
more  or  less,  in  the  prosperity  that  attends  the 
building  up  of  the  States  they  enter. 

In  general,  no  feature  of  Western  railroading  is 
more  active  and  efficient  than  the  Immigration 

147 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Bureau.  The  Immigration  Bureau  is  a  territo- 
rial and  social  clearing-house  through  which  the 
romance  t,  the  struggles,  and  the  ambitions  of 
primitiv  :•  American  homeseekers  pass  daily  like 
bank  cfe»ecks.  The  Immigration  Bureau  is  the 
buildef  of  new  settlements,  new  communities, 
and  n*w  States.  It  deals  with  the  class  of 
American  citizens  nearest  the  simple  life,  people 
wholly  in  earnest,  tillers  of  the  soil  and  small 
tradespeople  who  minister  directly  to  their  needs. 
This  is  the  sturdy,  industrial  class  that  raises  the 
crops,  saves  its  money,  talks  no  strange  political 
doctrine,  multiplies  refreshingly,  and  attends 
strictly  to  its  own  business,  and  is  the  comfort 
of  the  sociologist  that  knows  his  business.  The 
Immigration  Bureau  professes  no  politics  and  no 
one  religious  belief  to  the  prejudice  of  another. 
It  works  industriously  with  the  adherent  of  the 
older  faith  and  the  follower  of  the  new.  On  the 
plains  of  the  Dakotas,  or  of  the  Texas  Panhan- 
dle, or  in  the  far  counties  of  what  is  now  Okla- 
homa but  was  a  few  years  ago  No  Man's  Land, 
it  plants  within  gunshot  of  each  other  colonies  of 
Dunkards,  Mennonites,  Baptist  Brethren,  Luther- 
ans, and  Catholics.  The  best  of  these  pioneers 
are  to-day,  as  our  forefathers  were,  people  of 
strong  and  simple  religious  faith,  and  when  an 
immigration  agent  asks  a  concession  in  behalf  of 

148 


The  Rock  Island  System 

such  a  prospective  colony  he  urges  naively  that 
"  a  settlement  of  Dunkards  or  Mennonites  means 
more  settlers  in  the  future."  Race  suicide  makes 
no  inroads  upon  these  frontier  colonies.  The 
head  of  the  family  may  trim  his  whiskers  with  a 
scythe  and  shape  his  hat  over  a  coffee-pot,  but  he 
pays  off  his  mortgage  notes  and  has  wheat  in  his 
barn. 

The  rapidity  with  which  these  thrifty  folk  accu- 
mulate is  astonishing.  Twenty-eight  small  towns, 
and,  necessarily,  all  new  towns,  in  northern  Okla- 
homa, in  1903  showed  fifty-seven  banks  with 
deposits  of  $3,957,000.  The  town  of  Ana- 
darko  returned  to  the  Rock  Island  in  freight  re- 
ceipts in  1900,  $62,000;  in  1901,  $172,000. 
Hobart,  in  1900,  returned  $28,878;  in  1902, 
$309,168.  Hobart  ticket  sales,  which  in  1900 
were  $877.37,  were,  in  1902,  $42,833.71.  Law- 
ton,  in  a  year,  ran  up  from  $138,000  to  $352,000 
in  freight  earnings.  El  Reno,  in  passenger  earn- 
ings, rose  in  a  year  from  $63,000  to  $195,000. 

The  figures,  to  those  who  have  not  noted  the 
development  of  our  Southwestern  frontier,  are 
astonishing.  The  older  portions  of  Oklahoma 
are  already  so  well  settled  and  improved  farms 
are  held  so  high — $30  an  acre — that  the  alert 
Immigration  Bureau  is  already  preparing  to 
divert  the  Oklahoma  overflow  to  the  newer  lines 

149 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

in  the  Texas  Panhandle  and  New  Mexico, 
where  large  cattle  ranges  are  being  thrown  open 
to  small  farmers. 

It  seems  more  extraordinary  still  that  so  old  a 
State  as  Missouri  should  be  fertile  ground  for  an 
Immigration  Bureau.  Though  Missouri  was  ad- 
mitted to  the  Union  years  before  Iowa,  it  has  fewer 
school-houses  and  fewer  school-teachers  than  the 
younger  State,  and  there  are  still  whole  counties 
in  Missouri  without  a  railroad. 

Yet  Missouri,  in  profusion  of  natural  riches,  is 
without  a  parallel  in  the  United  States.  The 
operating  officer  of  one  of  the  greatest  railroad 
systems  in  this  country,  a  man  of  wide  executive 
experience,  riding  down  the  beautiful  Mohawk 
Valley  one  evening  in  his  car,  declared  that  if 
obliged  to  choose  from  all  the  Union  a  single 
State,  and  build  a  wall  around  it  that  he  was 
never  again  to  pass,  he  would  choose  Missouri ; 
and  the  adage  is  one  to  which  all  Missourians  are 
loyal. 

The  resources  along  the  new  Rock  Island  line 
recently  built  across  the  State,  putting  aside  an 
unrivalled  climate  and  agricultural  possibilities  of 
every  sort,  are  described  by  an  immigration  scout 
as  comprising  great  ledges  and  hills  of  iron  ore, 
all  manner  of  mineral  wealth,  coal  veins  twenty  to 
eighty  feet  thick,  timbered  tracts  of  the  highest 

150 


The  Rock  Island  System 

class  and  quantity,  and  large  areas  of  farming 
lands,  cultivated  and  uncultivated.  Why,  one 
would  ask,  build  railroads  in  Alaska?  Indeed, 
his  report,  fully  read,  at  once  brings  up  the  ques- 
tion, Why  does  not  everyone  live  in  Missouri? 

Yet  the  people  seem  open  to  other  convictions. 
In  Oklahoma  40,000  settlers  have  been  placed 
along  the  new  Rock  Island  lines  alone.  Within 
the  year  Oklahoma  City  has  increased  10,000 
people,  a  second  town  6,000,  and  a  third  3,000. 
Where  Government  lands  are  open  for  settlement 
filings  are  running  600  a  day.  New  Mexico 
towns,  too,  are  doubling  up  in  a  twelvemonth 
under  the  stimulus  of  the  railroad  work.  Towns 
rejoicing  in  names  such  as  Alamogordo  and  Tu- 
cumcari  support  jobbing  houses.  And  more 
consoling  instances  remain.  Eastern  Colorado 
will  commonly  be  acknowledged  as  being,  from 
the  car  window,  quite  hopeless;  yet  farmers 
there  make  good  livings  without  irrigation  by 
raising  Irish  potatoes.  The  country  is  the 
paradise  of  the  sick  man,  and  again  the  immigra- 
tion scout  comes  in  with  a  specific  instance  of 
a  man  whose  name,  I  have  pleasure  in  recording, 
is  Syke.  Syke  started  from  Ohio  fourteen  years 
ago  and  is  described  as  reaching  eastern  Colorado 
with  poor  lungs,  haemorrhages,  and  cash  $2.50. 
He  homesteaded  160  acres,  and  his  neighbours 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

"broke  out"  a  portion  of  it  for  him  the  first 
year.  On  October  13,  1903,  Syke,  as  hardy  as 
an  oak,  and  ploughing  potatoes  in  his  shirt- 
sleeves, owned  the  whole  section  of  640  acres, 
was  feeding  fifty  head  of  stock,  and  whispered 
to  the  railroad  emissary  of  money  in  the  bank. 
Who  for  fourteen  years  can  better  the  record  of 
Syke4? 

The  Western  railroad  does  not  stop  at  colonisa- 
tion ;  it  is  equally  a  bureau  of  agriculture.  The 
Government  conducts  such  a  department,  but  it 
is  the  railroad  that  spreads  the  information  sup- 
plied by  the  Government  and  supplements  its 
work  by  local  experiment  stations,  the  distribu- 
tion of  literature  and  seeds,  and  that  close-at-hand 
urging  that  gradually  compels  action  among  cau- 
tious farmers.  In  this  the  work  becomes  one  of 
the  greatest  prudence.  The  railroad  must  know 
precisely  what  it  has  to  offer  in  the  way  of  climate, 
soil,  natural  resources,  and  business  chances  or 
opportunities  for  investments.  These  are  its  at- 
tractions, and  they  must  be  put  before  the  inquirer 
with  definite  understanding  of  his  needs  and  how 
they  may  be  filled.  The  Burlington  for  years 
maintained  an  experiment  farm  to  demonstrate  to 
farmers  of  the  semi-arid  region  methods  of  subsoil 
culture.  The  Rock  Island  lines  have  taken  up  a 
peculiarly  hard  Russian  wheat  known  as  durum 

152 


The  Rock  Island  System 

or  macaroni  wheat,  and  have  found  in  it  a  grain 
clearly  adapted  to  the  dry,  hot  climate  of  our  table- 
lands west  of  the  one  hundredth  meridian.  Russia 
exports  40,000,000  bushels  of  this  wheat  a  year, 
and  the  Volga  district  which  produces  it  receives 
a  smaller  rainfall  than  our  own  Western  plains 
and  a  very  similar  distribution.  The  Department 
of  Agriculture  has  known  of  this  grain  for  forty 
years,  but  the  practical  difficulties  in  the  way  of  its 
culture  have  been  enormous.  There  has  been  thus 
far  no  developed  domestic  market  for  this  valuable 
product.  Millers  have  refused  to  buy  it  because 
its  extreme  hardness  makes  it  expensive  for  milling, 
and  it  will  not  mix  with  other  hard  native  wheats. 
Yet  such  a  grain  is  the  wheat  salvation  of  an  agri- 
cultural region  covering  thousands  of  miles  of 
rich  soil  under  a  low  rainfall,  a  dry  atmosphere, 
and  an  intense  summer  heat 

Here  the  railroad  takes  hold.  Its  industrial 
bureau  not  only  arranges  with  Minneapolis  millers 
for  milling  facilities  for  the  hard  wheat,  but  also 
investigates  export  markets.  In  this  way  the 
Rock  Island  has  learned  that  grain  brokers  at 
Marseilles  and  other  Mediterranean  ports  stand 
ready  to  handle  all  the  macaroni  wheat  that  is 
offered,  and  it  "follows  up"  by  investigating 
freight  rates  from  Russian  competitive  points  and 
making  a  rate  across  the  world  that  will  put  its 

153 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

local  farmer  for  an  export  basis  on  a  parity  with 
the  Volga  moujik. 

The  whole  process  strikingly  suggests  Mr.  Hill's 
industrial  work  in  a  wholly  different  direction,  but 
both  are  instances  of  what  the  Western  road 
is  doing  in  building  up  new  territories  and  new 
markets.  Some  of  these  roads  have  lands  to  sell; 
others,  as  the  Rock  Island,  have  none.  But  they 
all  understand  that  their  prosperity  is  bound  up  in 
the  development  of  local  territory ;  that  the  great- 
est care  is  needed  to  avoid  deception  or  misunder- 
standing in  their  advice  to  inquirers,  and  that  there 
is,  after  all,  no  friend  so  vital  to  the  prosperity  of 
the  Western  railroad  as  the  contented  settler. 


154 


THE  ATCHISON 


THE  ATCHISON 

ON  the  careers  of  many  Western  roads  lights 
and  shadows  have  fallen  sharply  within  the  last 
ten  years,  but  on  none  with  so  striking  a  contrast 
of  good  fortune  and  bad  as  on  the  Santa  Fe. 

There  have  been  periods,  and  those  almost  re- 
cent, when  it  seemed  as  if  all  of  the  railroad  dis- 
asters of  the  West,  whether  of  hard  times,  of  crop 
failures,  or  of  unfriendly  legislation,  had  camped 
together  on  the  trail  of  the  Santa  Fe.  In  1896 
many  bad  men  came  out  of  the  West;  but  of 
those  that  rode  over  the  railroad  pike  no  discour- 
aged miner,  no  burnt-out  farmer,  no  starved-out 
cattleman  had  more  of  a  hard-luck  story  than  the 
Santa  Fe  Railroad.  Indeed,  it  may  be  pictured 
about  1896  as  a  lone  frontiersman  heaving  in 
sight  under  the  sorriest  of  hats  and  on  the  leanest 
of  ponies,  with  mustaches  sweeping  his  chin  at 
half-mast. 

In  matter  of  fact,  every  wind  that  blew  from 
1890  to  1895  blew  bad  luck  to  the  Santa  Fe. 
Dividends  had  become  in  the  treasurer's  office  a 

157 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

mere  tradition;  the  defaulting  of  interest  was 
more  regular  than  the  train  service.  The  com- 
pany, both  physically  and  financially,  was  discred- 
ited. Many  of  its  obligations  toward  the  shipping 
public  had  been  repudiated;  it  had  no  standing 
among  bankers,  no  character  among  engineers,  no 
friends  among  customers,  no  respect  among  com- 
petitors ;  contempt  it  found  everywhere,  counte- 
nance nowhere. 

What  makes  the  Santa  Fe's  experience  so  ex- 
traordinary is  that  within  five  years  thereafter  it 
had  been  lifted  completely  out  of  this  railroad 
slough  of  despond,  and,  the  vane  of  its  fortune  re- 
sponding to  wholly  new  influences,  the  great  road 
saw  restored  to  itself  all  the  prestige  it  had  once 
enjoyed,  based  on  an  incomparably  wider  and 
deeper  foundation  than  it  had  ever  before  rested  on. 
More  singularly  still,  this  unusual  rehabilitation 
has  been  brought  about  entirely  by  the  manage- 
ment of  the  road  itself  and  not  through  its  being 
absorbed  by  any  strong  banking  house  or  big  rail- 
road magnate.  The  Santa  Fe  has  not  been  "  ab- 
sorbed "  by  anybody.  Even  among  independent 
railroads  it  stands  with  especial  distinctness  out- 
side any  combination  or  sphere  of  influence. 
There  are  independent  roads  in  plenty  that  are 
still  Morgan  roads,  or  Kuhn-Loeb  roads,  or  that 
take  suggestions  from  some  one  of  the  half-dozen 

158 


The  Atchison 

powers  in  the  railroad  world.  The  Santa  Fe  takes 
orders  neither  from  bankers  nor  syndicates.  It  is 
a  Western  road  run  entirely  by  its  own  official 
staff  of  young  Western  railroad  merchants,  and 
what  makes  its  story  of  especial  interest  is  that 
it  is  in  reality  the  story  of  a  railroad  man — 
Edward  P.  Ripley. 

When  Mr.  Ripley,  in  1896,  took  hold  of  the 
Santa  Fe  as  its  president  he  did  so  greatly  aaainst 
the  advice  of  his  friends.  His  own  record  was 
one  of  success,  that  of  the  road  one  of  failure ;  and 
for  him  to  ally  himself  with  an  institution  of  so 
doubtful  a  name  and  record  was  a  matter  of  con- 
cern to  his  well-wishers.  He  assured  himself, 
however,  of  one  thing  to  start  with :  a  good  cor- 
ner to  work  from.  Of  all  reorganisations  after 
the  panic  of  1 893  none  was  more  drastic  than  that 
laid  out  for  the  Santa  Fe.  The  fixed  charges  of 
the  company  were  cut  squarely  in  two,  and  in 
order  to  keep  the  sheriff  afterward  out  of  oper- 
ating headquarters,  it  was  necessary  for  the  com- 
pany to  earn  only  half  as  much  as  the  old  com- 
pany had  earned.  Starting  under  Mr.  Ripley's 
management  on  that  basis,  the  road  has  never 
since  left  solid  ground.  It  has  earned  not  only 
its  dollar  of  fixed  charges,  but  within  the  seven 
years  just  passed  has  more  than  doubled  its  gross 
earnings ;  and  while  increasing  its  mileage  in  that 

159 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

time  less  than  one-fourth  it  has  increased  its  earn- 
ings per  mile  more  than  two-thirds. 

Chance  will  hardly  account  for  such  a  showing  : 
gross  earnings  of  $68,000,000  last  year,  against 
$30,000,000  in  1897,  and  $8,300  a  mile,  against 
$4,750  seven  years  earlier.  It  has  been  done 
without  spectacular  display.  In  the  Santa  Fe  man- 
agement pyrotechnics  have  been  wholly  lacking. 
What,  then,  are  the  methods  by  which  this  road 
has  been  placed  in  so  short  a  time  in  the  very  first 
rank  of  American  railroads  ? 

The  Santa  Fe  has  in  its  president  a  man  who  is 
by  nature  of  a  judicial  temperament.  He  has  the 
characteristics  of  a  judge  well  poised,  and  had  his 
fortunes  inclined  to  the  law,  Mr.  Ripley  would 
have  been  eminent  as  a  jurist.  He  is  a  man  ap- 
parently unconscious  of  his  strength.  He  is 
wholly  unpretentious,  yet  in  the  struggles  that 
Western  roads  have  of  late  years  made  for  better 
railroad  practice  he  has  always  been  foremost,  and 
that  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  taking  of 
advanced  ground  has  at  times  been  to  the  disad- 
vantage temporarily  of  the  Santa  Fe.  Indeed, 
what  the  railroads  of  the  whole  country  owe  to 
the  fight  this  man  and  his  like  have  made  for 
proper  methods  and  good  practice  among  West- 
ern railroads  it  is  difficult  to  estimate.  Without 
the  effort  to  this  end  in  which  the  best  Western 

160 


THE   ATCHISON,    TOPEKA 


7A   FE    RAILWAY    SYSTEM. 


The  Atchison 

men  have  stood  firmly  together,  the  transportation 
business  of  the  country  to-day  could  hardly  have 
been  brought  to  the  position  into  which  Mr.  Cassatt 
has  worked^so  hard  to  put  it. 

The  head  of  the  Santa  Fe  in  this  way  has  com- 
manded both  the  respect  of  railroad  men  and  the 
confidence  of  his  associates.  He  has  stood  among 
competitors  as  prudent  and  dependable,  and  his 
straightforwardness  has  won  the  loyalty  of  his 
subordinates.  Though  incurring  at  times  the  dis- 
pleasure of  autocratic  shippers  who,  desirous  of 
buying  transportation  in  large  blocks,  have  found 
that  Mr.  Ripley  was  opposed  to  preferential  rates 
and  rebates,  he  has  in  the  end  forced  even  them 
to  recognise  the  justice  of  his  position. 

Put  such  a  man  at  the  head  of  an  army  of 
30,000  men  and  he  becomes  a  figure  in  the  rail- 
road world ;  and  with  this  light  on  his  character 
an  understanding  may  be  had  of  how  it  comes 
about  that  an  American  railroad,  merely  by  the 
application  to  its  management  of  sound  business 
principles,  may  attain  the  most  enviable  success. 

Railroad  combinations,  it  is  true,  within  five 
years  have  done  more  to  centralise  control  than 
had  been  done  previously  in  two  generations,  yet 
the  fact  must  not  be  lost  sight  of  that,  with  prac- 
tically all  done  in  this  direction  that  can  be  done 
until  a  new  generation  of  railroad  men  and  wholly 

161 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

new  powers  in  finance  arise,  competition  still  ex- 
ists everywhere.  At  the  beginning  of  1905  every 
railroad  point  in  the  United  States  is  a  competi- 
tive point. 

The  Santa  Fe  makes  its  headquarters  in  Chi- 
cago. In  railroad  control,  indeed,  Chicago  may 
be  called  the  continental  divide.  Many  roads  run 
into  Chicago  but  practically  none  run  through  it ; 
it  is  a  case  of  change  cars  for  everybody.  In  Chi- 
cago, therefore,  railroad  activity  is  to  be  looked 
for,  and  there  it  is  found.  The  position  of  the 
city,  unique  in  several  ways  in  the  railroad  world, 
makes  it  a  point  at  which  in  railway  matters  steam 
is  always  "  up."  In  Chicago  may  be  found  the 
operating  and  the  traffic  officers  of  the  most  pow- 
erful railroads  in  the  country.  There  are  in  Chi- 
cago half  a  dozen  private  offices  where  one  may 
find  maps  that  pieced  together  would  make  a  very 
respectable  supply  of  railroads  for  the  United 
States  if  all  other  roads  were  done  wholly  away 
with;  and  these  maps,  drawn  on  unusual  scale 
and  precise  as  the  field  plans  of  an  army  corps, 
represent  only  the  lines  controlled  by  the  half- 
dozen  officials  for  whose  use  they  have  been 
made. 

As  to  the  West,  all  of  its  railroad  destinies  are 
shaped  in  these  Chicago  offices.  In  Chicago  one 
man  sitting  at  his  desk  makes  a  rate  with  his  pen- 

162 


The  Atchison 

cil  from  his  Chicago  terminals  over  his  own  rails 
to  his  terminals  in  San  Francisco — but  by  no 
other  man  in  the  United  States  can  this  be  done. 
The  five  men  who  in  authority  that  is  absolute 
are  traffic  directors  of  two-thirds  of  the  United 
States  may  be  found  almost  every  day  within  a 
few  moments'  walk  of  each  other  in  Chicago. 

Showing  as  it  does  in  this  way  the  rather  start- 
ling possibilities  of  the  day  in  railroad  control, 
Chicago  is  likewise  the  place  to  look  for  some  of 
the  impossibilities,  for  above  all  other  railroad 
terminal  points  it  exemplifies  them.  It  is  the 
very  head  centre  of  the  independent  road  of  this 
day.  In  Chicago  one  is  brought  to  realise  that 
the  forging  of  new  links  in  railroad  chains  is  a 
good  thing  for  the  country  just  as  long  as  it  is 
good  business  for  the  men  that  attempt  it — and  no 
longer.  Chicago,  too,  forces  in  the  end  the  con- 
viction that  the  situation  is  so  much  bigger  than 
any  one  man — that  the  country  develops  so  much 
faster  than  any  one  man  in  it,  even  a  fabled 
Rockefeller,  that  a  monopoly  of  railroad  control, 
so  far  as  immediate  generations  are  concerned,  is 
the  spectre  of  a  dream. 

The  widest  possible  differences  in  theories  of 
railroad  management  exist  side  by  side  in  Chi- 
cago. One  great  operator  looks  first  and  always 
to  a  particular  feature  of  his  reports :  the  expense 

(163 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

account.  Another  operator,  equally  powerful  and 
equally  able,  holds  that  a  low  expense  account 
does  not  necessarily  make  for  the  quickest  devel- 
opment of  his  territory  and  not,  therefore,  for 
the  best  interests  of  his  road.  The  first,  acting  on 
his  theories  of  management,  holds  the  car  of 
wheat  of  his  farmer  on  the  siding  until  he  can  in- 
clude it  in  a  freight  train  heavy  enough  for  the 
full  capacity  of  the  locomotive  assigned  to  pull  it. 
The  other  operator  holds  that  the  farmer's  grain 
must  be  marketed  at  once.  He  maintains  that 
he  cannot  afford  to  leave  wheat  on  the  sidings  or 
in  the  yards  till  he  gets  the  maximum  tonnage  for 
an  engine.  Move  the  grain;  time  is  money. 
The  farmer's  capital  is  tied  up,  the  argument 
runs;  release  it  promptly  and  begin  over  again. 
It  will  cost  more  for  the  train-mile,  but  not 
enough  to  warrant  holding  back  the  movement ; 
the  American  way  is  to  look  for  quick  returns 
and  more  business.  Apply  these  ideas  to  the 
whole  field  of  railway  management,  and  the 
germs  of  quite  different  philosophies  are  seen.  A 
larger  expense  account  may  not  necessarily  mean 
a  loss;  it  may  stand  for  a  stimulation  of  traffic 
that  will  develop  more  and  stronger  shippers  and 
bigger  dividends. 

In  Chicago  those  that  like  to  see  large  rail- 
roads merged  in  control  and  well  operated — and 


The  Atchison 

no  road  can  be  well  operated  without  benefiting 
the  territory  it  serves — may  find  them ;  and  those 
observers  who  fear  that  against  such  combinations 
independent  lines  no  longer  have  a  chance  for 
their  existence  may  see  them  in  Chicago  abso- 
lutely the  peers  of  the  most  powerful  competitors. 

This,  then,  is  the  atmosphere  in  which  the 
Santa  Fe  thrives.  Untrammelled  by  any  connec- 
tion that  can  swerve  it  to  the  right  or  to  the  left 
in  railroad  affairs,  it  maintains  friendly  relations 
with  all  of  its  neighbours  and  contracts  entangling 
alliances  with  none.  It  is  the  one  big,  red  apple 
still  left  on  the  railroad  tree,  hanging  so  high  that 
thus  far  no  magnate's  pole  has  been  able  to  reach 
it,  although  George  Gould,  J.  J.  Hill,  and  E.  H. 
Harriman  have  cast  longing  eyes  in  its  direction. 
Surrounded  by  railroad  groups  and  rumours  of 
groups,  the  aloofness  of  the  Santa  Fe  is  as  refresh- 
ing as  an  inspiration,  and  to  the  man  looking  for 
an  example  of  an  independent  road  ruddy  with 
prosperity  it  is  an  oasis  in  the  combination  desert. 

In  the  big  national  railroad  game  in  which  by 
reason  of  its  size  and  strength  it  plays  every  day, 
the  Santa  Fe  strategy  is  characterised  by  its  blunt 
candour.  There  are  roads  that  jealously  hold  up 
their  cards,  that  assume  a  mysterious  air  and 
negotiate  from  behind  a  mask.  The  Santa  Fe's 
tactics  are  as  open  as  its  strength.  It  throws 

165 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

down  its  cards  frankly :  Here  is  what  we  have ; 
what  have  you*?  Business  may  be  done  with 
such  a  road  if  one  talks  concisely  and  to  the 
point;  but  when  it  knows  its  own  strength  and 
has  a  pretty  shrewd  idea  of  all  that  is  out  against 
it,  bluffing  is  futile. 

Management  of  such  a  sort  will  succeed  out- 
side a  combination  quite  as  well  as  within  one. 
The  Santa  Fe  men  are  young  men  in  the  sense 
that  they  are  particularly  alive,  and  they  come 
from  a  good  railroad  school.  In  1878  Mr.  Rip- 
ley  was  general  freight  agent  of  the  Burlington, 
and  Mr.  Paul  Morton,  now  Secretary  of  the  Navy, 
was  a  clerk  in  his  office.  Just  why  the  Burling- 
ton has  graduated  so  many  more  big  railroad 
men  than  its  natural  share  no  one  seems  clearly 
to  have  determined.  But  Burlington  men  are  as 
widely  prominent  throughout  the  United  States 
in  railway  management  as  Ohio  men  are  in  public 
offices.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  Bur- 
lington was  some  time  ago  absorbed  by  the 
Northern  Pacific,  the  Burlington  Howard  Elliot 
appears  already  to  have  absorbed  the  Northern 
Pacific  presidency.  The  New  York  Central  and 
the  Lake  Shore  roads  are  operated  by  a  Burling- 
ton man,  William  C.  Brown,  and  two  men  from 
the  Burlington  have  managed  very  largely  the 
destinies  of  the  new  Santa  Fe. 

166 


The  Atchison 

What  the  Santa  Fe  stands  for  that  is  unique 
among  American  roads  is  the  present  position 
and  unusual  length  of  its  main  line.  No  other 
road  that  owns  a  Chicago  terminal  can  boast  a 
straightaway  line  into  San  Francisco  Bay. 

Geographically,  then,  the  road  is  of  especial  in- 
terest; but  it  stands  also  on  the  most  debatable 
railroad  ground  in  the  country.  Not  only  is  its 
competition  widely  distributed  but  of  a  character 
the  most  intense  and  incalculable.  The  Santa 
Fe  from  Chicago  strikes  straight  into  the  heart  of 
the  Gould  lines  territory.  At  the  Missouri  River 
it  meets  practically  all  comers — Hill's  pet,  the 
dangerous  Burlington;  Harriman's  crack  line,  the 
superb  Alton ;  the  always  powerful  St.  Paul  and 
the  new  Rock  Island ;  besides  the  liveliest  of  the 
Gould  lines,  the  Wabash  and  the  Missouri  Pa- 
cific. The  Santa  Fe  from  Twelfth  Street  to  Kan- 
sas City  lies  in  a  blaze  of  competition  that  would 
melt  ordinary  railroad  abilities,  and  west  of  the 
Missouri  River  the  map  broadens  into  the  Colo- 
rado territory.  The  St.  Paul,  then,  has  dropped 
out,  the  Wabash  is  out,  the  Alton  is  out,  but 
Harriman  is  there  with  the  great  Union  Pacific, 
and  Chicago  competition  is  again  added  by  way 
of  the  keen  and  far-reaching  Chicago  and  North- 
western. Hill  remains  with  the  Burlington,  and 
the  new  Rock  Island  is  there,  as  it  is  again  on  the 

167 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Gulf  of  Mexico,  where  the  Santa  Fe  must  also 
lock  horns  with  George  Gould  on  his  stamping- 
ground  and  with  Harriman  again  in  the  Southern 
Pacific.  This  is  surely  business  enough ;  but  the 
Santa  Fe,  with  a  jump  that  leaves  all  but  the  very 
giants  of  the  Western  world  behind,  crossing  the 
desert  wastes  and  the  continental  divide,  opens  its 
freight-house  doors  on  San  Francisco  Bay.  Here 
the  competition  again  takes  on  new  features.  It 
is  not  alone  the  powerful  competition  of  its  own 
territory — the  Southern  Pacific  intrenched  behind 
an  unbroken  monopoly  of  thirty  years  in  its  own 
stronghold — that  must  be  reckoned  with  now — it 
is  also  Vancouver,  Puget  Sound,  and  the  Canadian 
roads  competing  for  the  traffic  of  the  Orient. 

Thus  the  combinations  that  engage  the  Santa 
Fe  management  are  as  wide  as  the  continent,  and 
what  the  odds  are  against  the  Santa  Fe  may 
now  be  reckoned.  It  is  practically  the  Santa  Fe 
against  the  field.  The  first  great  move  that  Mr. 
Ripley  made  to  give  the  Santa  Fe  absolute  inde- 
pendence was  properly  to  open  his  California  out- 
let. He  found  the  Santa  Fe  unable  to  land  its 
freight  in  San  Francisco  save  over  a  hostile  con- 
nection, and  he  severed  the  cord  that  was  stran- 
gling it  by  acquiring  his  own  rails  into  northern 
California.  With  his  terminals  thus  firmly  fixed 
at  Chicago  and  San  Francisco  he  has  rested  con- 

168 


The  Atchison 

tent  in  his  own  territory.  Beyond  the  fight  he 
has  made  for  proper  rate  conditions  and  due  rec- 
ognition he  cannot  be  said  to  have  indulged  in 
offensive  measures.  His  energies  and  those  of  his 
staff  are  turned  at  all  times  in  the  direction  of 
developing  their  local  territory,  and  in  this  the 
success  of  the  road  has  been  almost  phenomenal. 
In  oil  alone,  which  it  uses  everywhere  in  western 
Arizona  and  California  on  its  locomotives,  the 
Santa  Fe  carries  ten  thousand  cars  a  year  where 
formerly  it  carried  none  locally  in  California  or 
Texas. 

Though  meeting  in  the  most  liberal  way  mine 
owners  and  people  interested  in  developing  the 
Southwest,  and  adopting  a  policy  of  not  charging 
locally  more  than  the  traffic  will  bear,  the  Santa 
Fe  has  been  largely  instrumental  in  preventing 
preferential  rates  to  the  owners  of  private  line 
refrigerator  cars,  and  has  eliminated  them  entirely 
from  its  own  traffic  problems;  and  this  sturdy 
determination  to  put  all  shippers  on  a  just  and 
equal  footing,  to  maintain  open  and  even  rates,  is 
the  note  of  Mr.  Ripley's  successful  strategy.  Like 
all  men  that  achieve  unusual  success,  the  head  of 
the  Santa  Fe  is  studied  curiously  by  the  world, 
eager  to  get  at  the  secret  of  how  such  things  have 
been  done.  When  the  facts  are  known  the  world 
stands  surprised.  Instead  of  a  cabalistic  formula 

169 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

for  getting  on,  the  curious  inquirer  has  found 
merely  the  simplest,  oldest  principles  of  doing 
business — common-sense  in  generous  quantities, 
well  grounded  in  common  honesty. 

The  work  of  the  Santa  Fe  to-day  is  that  which 
must  for  fifty  years  to  come  absorb  the  attention 
of  every  Western  road — the  colonising  of  local 
territory,  the  planting  of  a  family  where  only  a 
cactus  grew  before.  To  this  end  its  people  preach 
the  gospel  of  irrigation  and  spend  extraordinary 
sums  in  advertising  the  resources  of  the  West. 

The  steady  growth  made  by  it  in  mileage  and 
in  earnings  throws  a  curious  sidelight  on  one  feat- 
ure of  American  prosperity  directly  attributable 
to  this  pioneer  work,  and  one  which  within  seven 
years  has  become  so  pronounced  as  to  take  on  the 
proportions  of  a  mystery.  In  the  disastrous  stock 
panic  of  1903  the  East,  frightened  at  the  bursting 
of  its  own  prodigious  bubble,  looked  for  a  national 
panic.  London  and  the  Continent  shared  the  ap- 
prehensions of  New  York.  But  the  panic  did 
not  materialise;  Wall  Street's  poor  relations,  the 
Missouri  and  the  Iowa  farmer  and  the  Kansas  and 
the  Nebraska  homesteader,  came  to  the  rescue  of 
the  country  with  their  blue  jeans  bursting  with 
cash.  Credit  has  been  frankly  accorded  to  the 
West  for  its  aid,  but  Wall  Street  hardly  under- 
stands yet  where  the  money  came  from,  and 

170 


The  Atchison 

that  a  portion  of  the  glory  is  the  due  of  the 
railroads. 

In  the  early  days  the  Western  farmer,  having 
no  money  to  buy  cattle  or  hogs,  marketed  his 
corn — frequently  without  its  being  even  shelled. 
To-day  he  owns  his  own  feed  lots,  his  cattle,  and 
his  hogs.  Five  carloads  of  corn  feed  one  carload 
of  steers  and  one  of  hogs.  But  the  corn,  if  mar- 
keted instead  of  being  fed,  would  pay  a  higher 
rate  per  car — owing  to  its  greater  weight — than 
an  average  car  either  of  hogs  or  of  cattle.  Instead 
of  paying  freight  on  five  carloads,  then,  as  he  paid 
ten  years  ago,  he  now  pays  freight  on  but  two  car- 
loads— a  reduction  in  freight  expense  of  three- 
fifths.  Moreover,  at  Kansas  City,  or  some  other 
Missouri  River  point,  two  cars  of  his  steers  are 
made  into  one  car  of  dressed  beef,  and  this  is 
hauled  to  Chicago  at  about  the  same  rate  the  car- 
load of  corn  pays.  Here,  again,  the  amount  paid 
for  freight  charges  is  cut  in  two,  and  the  farmer 
directly  benefits  by  it.  As  a  result,  the  farmers 
have  been  getting  thirty-five  to  forty  cents  for  corn 
they  used  to  sell  at  ten  and  fifteen  cents  a  bushel 
to  be  cribbed.  In  addition  to  this  it  may  be  esti- 
mated that  they  realize  at  least  fifty  per  cent,  more 
for  the  corn  they  feed  to  stock.  The  situation, 
then,  to-day  is  that  the  farmer,  who  at  one  time  had 
to  lose  all  but  the  producer's  profit  in  raising  corn, 

171 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

has  added  to  his  balance-sheet  the  manufacturer's 
profit  of  changing  corn  into  pork  and  beef.  Small 
wonder  that  he  has  an  occasional  surplus  to  lend 
in  Wall  Street;  and  his  prosperity  has  been  no 
slight  factor  in  the  remarkable  showing  of  the 
Santa  Fe. 

Standing  as  it  does,  directly  out  in  the  spotlight 
of  the  railroad  stage  and  still  absolutely  unaffili- 
ated,  the  great  road  engages  in  turn  the  interest 
of  each  of  its  powerful  rivals.  A  combination  of 
the  highest  strategical  importance  to  it  would  lie 
in  a  tie-up  with  the  Rock  Island.  The  Santa  Fe 
would,  in  that  event,  stand  west  of  Albuquerque 
as  an  exclusive  ally  for  the  Moores  to  the  Pacific 
Coast.  Under  such  a  combination  an  exchange 
of  trackage  east  of  Albuquerque  to  form  the 
shortest  possiblejiftc"-v^ould  result  in  an  extraor- 
dinary shortening  of  the  distance  between  Chi- 
cago, St.  Louis,  and  Kansas  City  and  Los  Ange- 
les and  San  Francisco.  It  would  even  be  possible 
for  a  contract  to  be  entered  into  between  the  two 
companies  as  they  now  stand  highly  advantageous 
to  both. 

But  more  tremendous  in  consequence  and  of  a 
nature  that  might  mean  the  recasting  of  every 
American  railroad  plan  existing  to-day  would  be 
the  absorption  of  this  youngest  of  the  Western 
transcontinental  giants  by  the  Pennsylvania  lines. 

172 


The   Atchison 

In  such  a  move  would  lie  possibilities  calculated 
to  keep  the  railroad  world  sleepless  for  long  nights 

to  come.     If  in  retaliation  for  the  invasion  of  its 

• 

territory  by  the  Gould  lines,  whose  transits  already 
bear  on  Baltimore,  the  Pennsylvania  should  buy 
the  Santa  Fe  it  would  at  a  single  step  cross  the 
Rockies  and  run  its  engines  from  ocean  to  ocean. 


THE  CHICAGO,   MILWAUKEE  AND 
ST.   PAUL   RAILWAY 


THE   CHICAGO,    MILWAUKEE   AND 
ST.    PAUL 

THIRTY  years  ago  the  farmers  of  the  North- 
west set  vigorously  about  reforming  the  railroads. 
Over  Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  and  Iowa  ran  an 
epidemic  of  railroad  legislation  as  lively  as  a  prairie 
fire,  and  the  movement  took  on  a  political  activity 
that  surprised  the  country.  The  organization 
through  which  the  farmers  worked  was  a  fraternal 
association  known  as  the  Grange,  and  the  move- 
ment became  famous  as  the  Granger  movement. 

The  Grange  has  gone  the  way  of  all  orders  po- 
litical ;  its  legislation  lies  forgotten  on  the  statute 
books.  But  the  movement  left  those  railroads 
lying  within  reach  of  the  Granger  laws  a  name 
that  survives;  Wall  Street  dubbed  the  North- 
west roads  The  Granger  Lines,  and  prominent  in 
the  group,  then  as  now,  is  the  Chicago,  Milwau- 
kee and  St.  Paul  Railway. 

In  this  system  lies  the  story  of  the  first  railroad 
built  in  the  State  of  Wisconsin.  This  was  the 
first  road  to  give  an  Eastern  outlet  by  rail  to  the 
cities  of  St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis,  and  one  of  the 

177 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

very  first  roads  to  adopt  the  system  of  shipping 
grain  in  bulk,  which  marked  the  beginning  of 
the  modern  grain  elevator.  The  St.  Paul  Road  is 
essentially  a  Wisconsin  road  in  its  beginnings — 
the  work  of  Wisconsin  men  and  a  product  of 
Wisconsin  planning.  It  is  founded  on  three  lit- 
tle railroads,  one  of  which  was  planned  within 
ten  years  after  the  definite  settlement  of  Milwau- 
kee and  Wisconsin,  in  1836.  The  story  divides 
itself  very  clearly  into  two  periods  :  the  first  before 
1887,  when  Wall  Street  influences  controlled  the 
road's  possibilities;  the  second  after  1887,  wnen 
the  St.  Paul  shook  off  speculative  control  and 
became  a  railroad  in  the  true  sense.  The  year 
1887  marks  the  real  turning  point  in  St.  Paul 
fortunes ;  after  that  no  more  fancy  branches,  no 
more  speculative  rigging,  but  straightaway  rail- 
roading; and  such  it  has  been  ever  since.  From 
beginnings  that  were  random  a  system  has  been 
built  up  so  unified  now  that  each  of  its  constituent 
lines  has  been  merged  even  as  to  corporate  organ- 
ization in  the  big  parent  company.  The  St.  Paul 
controls  no  subordinate  lines;  it  absorbs  them, 
makes  them  a  part  of  itself,  and  their  identity 
becomes  merged  absolutely  into  the  strength  of 
the  whole  system.  To-day  it  has  no  corporate 
creature  permanently  within  its  fold. 

This  policy  is  by  no  means  accidental.     It  is  a 


The   St.  Paul 

policy  of  individuality,  so  to  say,  the  result  of  a 
well-defined  plan  of  the  real  St.  Paul  founders, 
and  it  will  be  interesting  to  watch  its  develop- 
ment to  the  minute  details  of  management.  For 
twenty  years  the  system  has  adhered  to  a  clearly 
marked  course.  It  has  acquired  distinct  policies 
and  they  have  become  a  code.  It  is  almost  a  St. 
Paul  maxim,  for  example,  that  the  worst  use  you 
can  put  a  man  to  is  to  discharge  him.  St.  Paul 
men  have  come  from  the  operator's  key  through 
all  of  the  intermediate  steps  even  to  the  presi- 
dent's table,  and  the  acumen,  administrative  abil- 
ity, and  strengthening  judgment  of  men  distinctly 
St.  Paul  bred  have  been  recognized  in  the  whole 
American  railroad  world.  The  St.  Paul,  like  the 
Burlington,  has  become  recognized  as  a  railroad 
training-school  of  the  first  order. 

Of  the  territory  in  which  these  St.  Paul  lines 
were  originally  projected  there  has  never  been  but 
one  opinion :  State  for  State  it  has  probably  no 
industrial  equal  in  the  world.  Minnesota  alone 
raised  last  year  one-ninth  of  the  spring  wheat 
crop  of  the  United  States.  Illinois  produced  one- 
tenth  of  all  the  grain  raised  in  the  country,  and 
Iowa  one-tenth  of  all  the  corn.  Iowa's  entire 
grain  crop  amounted  to  300,000  carloads.  North 
Dakota  contains  76,000  square  miles,  and  practi- 
cally every  acre  of  this  land  is  tillable.  South  Da- 

179 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

kota  is  even  larger,  with  86,000  square  miles,  and 
outside  the  mineral  wealth  of  the  Black  Hills,  is 
given  wholly  to  agriculture,  dairying,  and  stock- 
raising.  The  Dakotas  are,  in  effect,  vast  national 
granaries  and  meat  preserves,  and  the  St.  Paul 
counts  1,200  miles  of  track  in  the  Dakotas  and 
1,800  miles  in  Iowa. 

Wisconsin  in  resources  is  a  nation  in  itself.  It 
is  the  most  cosmopolitan  of  our  States,  and  three- 
fourths  of  its  people  are  of  foreign  birth  or  par- 
entage. Wisconsin  counts  100  grasses,  and,  if 
nature  has  denied  to  it  coal,  it  has  given  to  it  sixty 
forest  trees.  Swept  by  glaciers  ages  ago,  the  land- 
scape hollows  of  this  early  moraine  present  an 
unending  variety  of  lakes :  it  is  the  land  of  lakes ; 
there  are  some  two  thousand  scattered  over  the 
State,  and  they  are  notable  for  every  charm 
of  the  forest  landscape.  They  lie  in  a  climate 
more  rarely  favored  than  any  of  our  national 
playgrounds.  They  have  the  seclusion  and  the 
charm  of  the  English  lake  and  the  sun  and  the 
air  of  Switzerland.  Their  elevation,  even,  is  a 
surprise.  One  of  these  landscape  mirrors,  Trout 
Lake,  lies  more  than  one  thousand  five  hundred 
feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea — almost  a  thou- 
sand feet  above  Lake  Michigan,  close  beside  it. 
In  Wisconsin's  forests  are  the  spruce,  the  pines, 
and  the  larch  and  the  arbutus  springs  from  under 

180 


Ul  1  H 

REDFIELD 


THE    CHICAGO,    M1LWA 


The  St.  Paul 

the  snow;  the  yew  is  there  and  the  birches,  the 
wild  iris  and  the  violet,  the  bluebell,  the  clematis, 
and  the  brier  rose. 

Into  this  rich  territory  have  come  people  from 
every  State  in  Europe  save  Turkey.  They  have 
made  their  own  settlements,  preserved  in  many 
interesting  instances  the  best  of  their  native  cus- 
toms, clung  tenaciously  to  their  religious  faiths, 
worked  unceasingly  and  prospered.  Wisconsin 
as  a  commonwealth  is  a  study  in  industrial  con- 
tentment. To  the  whole  Northwest  this  admix- 
ture of  foreign  peoples  in  Wisconsin  has  shown 
the  remarkable  industrial  possibilities  in  dairying. 
The  abounding  springs,  the  rushing  waters  of  the 
rivers,  and  the  cool  of  the  clear,  deep  lakes  in 
Wisconsin  all  suggest  the  dairy,  and  native  grasses 
afford  the  richest  of  grazing  for  the  herd.  On 
the  wild  beaver  meadows  of  northern  Wisconsin 
the  prairie  blue-stem  is  found,  the  bunch  grass  of 
the  plains,  the  grama  and  the  buffalo  grass.  The 
baled  hay  brought  years  ago  into  the  logging 
camps  has  fertilized  the  lands  left  desolate  by  the 
lumbermen.  And  not  alone  have  cattle  a  first 
place  on  these  cut-over  lands ;  sheep  are  brought 
from  the  Wyoming  and  Colorado  ranges,  sum- 
mered on  Wisconsin  herbage,  and  brought  in  the 
fall  to  the  Chicago  market  as  grass-fed  mutton. 
On  the  raw  brush  land  the  Angora  goat  thrives, 

181 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

and  hot  only  civilizes,  but  fertilizes,  the  soil 
where  it  browses.  A  flock  of  a  hundred  Angoras 
is  equal,  it  is  said,  to  the  best  woodsman  in 
clearing  cut-over  brush  lands. 

In  Minnesota  white  men  found  the  buffalo  and 
the  wild  horse.  Old  Jonathan  Carver,  writing 
more  than  a  hundred  and  thirty  years  ago,  de- 
scribes the  flow  of  the  river  St.  Pierre  through  a 
region  where  trees  bend  under  their  weight  of 
fruits,  where  meadows  are  green  with  the  vine  of 
the  hop,  and  the  waters  teem  with  celery  and  wild 
rice ;  where  the  earth  is  stored  with  useful  roots, 
with  angelica  and  spikenard;  where  bluffs  rise 
boldly  and  are  crowned  with  hickory  and  maple. 
Carver  tells  of  the  wild  duck  and  the  swan,  of  the 
brant  and  the  goose  and  the  partridge  and  the 
wild  turkey.  This  is  Minnesota :  its  beauty,  fer- 
tility, and  lasting  charm  have  stirred  red  men 
and  white.  Into  this  land  have  flowed  for  the  last 
fifty  years  the  hardiest  strains  of  the  blood  of 
Northern  Europe,  the  big,  light-haired,  blue-eyed 
people  who  rejoice  in  the  work  of  the  field  and 
glory  in  the  chill,  bright  sun  of  winter.  In  Min- 
nesota there  are  dainty  cataracts,  lakes  that  lie 
in  chains,  and  forests  not  yet  wholly  sacrificed  to 
American  haste  and  waste. 

To  railroads  it  would  be  hard  to  present   a 
more  tempting  field,  and  the  growth  of  the  rail- 

182 


The  St.  Paul 

road  in  such  a  territory  is  an  easy  and  natural  fol- 
lowing of  the  territory's  development  under  the 
aids  of  industry  and  transportation.  To  put  the 
matter  very  simply,  the  story  of  the  railroad  in 
the  Northwest  is  the  story  of  the  wheat-field. 
There  were  lesser  interests,  of  course,  as  when  a 
road  was  built  into  a  timbered  country  for  the 
lumber  traffic.  Grain,  however,  in  the  beginning 
was  the  chief  matter.  What  is  most  unexpected 
in  the  growth  of  Northwest  traffic  is  the  way  in 
which,  on  the  Granger  lines,  grain  as  a  traffic  king 
has  been  dethroned.  The  explanation,  too,  has 
its  peculiar  interest  in  this :  that  the  wheat-field 
is  continually  being  pushed  further  West.  This 
has  always  been  so ;  with  the  vanguard  of  civiliza- 
tion the  wheat-field  has  followed  the  frontier.  It 
has  been  driven  in  earlier  generations  from  Illi- 
nois, Wisconsin,  and  Iowa.  It  lies  now  west  of 
the  Missouri  River  and  north  in  Minnesota  and 
the  Dakotas.  Oddly  enough,  too,  checked  on  the 
west  by  the  Rockies,  it  has  turned  north,  and  to 
the  north  it  is  receding  with  a  swiftness  that 
is  startling  beyond  our  national  boundary  line. 
When  our  first  transcontinental  railroad  was  built, 
men  attempted  by  isothermal  demonstration  to 
prove  that  wheat  could  not  profitably  be  grown 
north  of  where  the  road  was  projected ;  but  the 
real  granary  of  the  world  lies  up  to  three  hundred 

183 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

miles  north  of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railroad,  and 
the  day  is  not  indefinitely  distant  when  the  United 
States  will  knock  at  the  doors  of  Canada  for  its 
bread.  Railroad  men  see  such  a  day;  it  may  be 
hoped  that  statesmen  also  will  see  it  and  arrange 
their  reciprocities  while  they  may  do  so  gracefully. 
Americans  already  have  swarmed  into  that  far 
country  and  to  a  degree  have  taken  the  American 
wheat-field  with  them.  Despite  the  fact  that  for 
years  a  little  Dakota  station  on  the  St.  Paul  Road 
— Eureka — held  the  distinction  of  being  the 
largest  primary  grain  market  in  the  world,  the 
Dakotas  and  Minnesota  will  one  day  yield  their 
palm  to  Saskatchewan. 

The  St.  Paul,  then,  being  a  Granger  line,  began 
with  the  wheat-field.  Within  the  ten  years  since 
1 894  the  shifting  importance  of  the  grain  move- 
ment is  told  in  the  traffic  reports.  In  1894  grain 
made  up  thirty-two  per  cent,  of  St.  Paul  traffic; 
in  1903  it  made  up  only  twenty-three  per  cent, 
yet  the  St.  Paul  System  carried  twice  as  much 
grain  in  1903  as  in  1894.  In  spite,  therefore,  of 
a  constantly  increasing  grain  traffic  the  growth  of 
other  traffic  in  St.  Paul  territory  has  in  one  decade 
crowded  the  grain  percentage  down  almost  ten 
per  cent,  in  the  totals.  The  explanation  is  di- 
versified farming,  manufacturing,  and  that  increase 
in  miscellaneous  traffic  that  follows  growing 

184 


The  St.  Paul 

wealth  in  a  community.  Diversified  farming  has 
taken  possession  of  the  Granger  lines  territory. 
The  old-time  hazard  of  a  single  crop  is  quite  a 
thing  of  the  past  in  Iowa,  Minnesota,  and,  to  a 
great  extent,  in  the  Dakotas,  where,  in  the  begin- 
ning, only  wheat  was  raised.  The  St.  Paul  goes 
back  to  the  day  when  wheat  was  shipped  in  bags. 
The  receiver  of  one  of  the  early  roads  merged  into 
the  St.  Paul  asked  for  a  court  order  authorizing 
him  to  build  a  grain  elevator  at  La  Crosse,  Wis., 
for  the  purpose  of  handling  shipments  of  grain  in 
bulk.  Grain  came  down  the  river  then  in  barges, 
and  the  St.  Paul  Road  began  shipping  bulk  grain 
over  its  rails  from  Prairie  du  Chien,  and  the  St. 
Paul,  growing  in  prosperity,  has  lived  to  see  the 
wheat-field,  like  the  Indian,  constantly  recede,  and 
to  see  the  decline,  through  changing  conditions 
in  transportation,  of  that  grain-elevator  system 
which  for  one  American  generation  was  a  supreme 
industrial  achievement. 

As  early  as  1870  the  Milwaukee  and  St.  Paul 
Road  had  become  important  in  Northwestern 
activities,  but  Milwaukee,  at  one  time  the  greatest 
grain  market  of  the  world,  was  then  being  passed 
by  Chicago.  A  Chicago  terminal  had  become 
for  any  road  in  the  Northwest  an  absolute  neces- 
sity, and  the  St.  Paul  built  to  Chicago  and  added 
Chicago  to  its  name.  The  movement  was  a 

185 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

blow  dreaded  by  Milwaukee,  but  as  is  often  the 
unexpected  issue,  the  growth  of  its  original  rail- 
road has  resulted  in  strengthening  Milwaukee 
itself.  Built  by  Wisconsin  men,  the  system  for 
many  years  was  manned  by  Wisconsin  men,  but 
outside  blood  was  good  for  the  road  as  it  grew. 
When  Sir  William  Van  Home  came  to  the  St. 
Paul  from  the  Alton  as  general  superintendent, 
he  felt  so  quickly  this  atmosphere  of  solidarity 
among  the  employees  that  he  said  if  a  man  were 
kicked  in  Milwaukee  he  protested  on  the  Mis- 
souri River. 

For  transcontinental  traffic,  then  shaping  its 
way  through  Chicago,  an  Omaha  line  had,  even 
in  1870,  become  logical,  and  fitted  easily  into  the 
growing  extensions  in  Iowa  and  Dakota.  Some- 
times a  war  measure  became  a  feature  of  St.  Paul 
extension,  as  when  the  Burlington  built  up  the 
Mississippi  River  to  St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis, 
and  the  St.  Paul  flung  an  anchor  to  leeward  in 
the  shape  of  a  line  to  Kansas  City ;  but  the  true 
importance  of  this  Southwestern  outlet,  built  as  a 
retaliatory  measure,  was  not  apparent  when  it  was 
planned.  As  some  of  the  early  branches  built  by 
Wall  Street  speculators  were  builded  better  than 
they  knew,  so  the  Southwestern  extension  of  the 
St.  Paul  has  in  late  years  taken  on  a  wholly  new 
significance. 

186 


The   St.  Paul 

When  the  attempt  was  first  made  to  export 
grain  to  Europe  by  way  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico, 
it  was  found  that  the  cargoes  lay  so  long  in  sail- 
ing vessel  holds  in  the  heated  Southern  waters  as 
to  suffer  damage.  The  big,  swift  tramp  steamer, 
however,  has  changed  this  and  carries  Gulf  grain 
to  Liverpool  in  safety.  As  a  consequence  the 
Gulf  is  a  constantly  growing  factor  in  the  export 
of  grain,  and  the  Atlantic  seaboard  a  correspond- 
ingly declining  factor.  Such  a  shifting  of  traffic 
puts  new  and  rather  grave  problems  before  a 
Granger  line.  It  is  the  men  watching  these  con- 
stantly moving  industrial  tides  who  alone  can 
estimate  their  force.  In  private  offices  like  those 
of  Chicago  traffic  managers  this  Gulf  tide  rising 
year  after  year  has  been  steadily  watched,  quietly 
but  with  no  feature  of  its  significance  overlooked, 
and  when  it  comes  too  high  into  the  North  the 
Granger  lines  will  buy  or  build  to  the  Gulf,  and 
with  the  longer  haul  afforded  them  will  make 
more  money  than  at  present  on  their  grain. 
What  the  St.  Paul  may  do  in  a  southern  direction 
it  would  be  hazardous  to  predict  as  it  would  be  to 
say  what  it  may  some  time  do  in  a  northern.  This 
much  is  obvious:  the  Granger  line  began  with 
the  wheat-field  and  has  followed  it  closely  into 
Minnesota  and  the  Dakotas ;  if  it  moves  into  and 
up  the  valley  of  the  Red  River  of  the  North,  such 

187 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

a  step  could  occasion  no  surprise,  and  it  will 
naturally  seek  to  carry  the  grain  as  close  to  tide- 
water as  its  competitors  carry  it. 

George  B.  Roberts  of  the  Pennsylvania  once 
paraphrased  an  aphorism  to  the  effect  that  when  a 
railroad  ceases  to  be  aggressive  it  is  the  beginning 
of  decay.  In  the  sense  that  all  live  roads  must 
be,  the  St.  Paul  is  aggressive.  Beginning  with 
wheat  it  became  an  ore  road  and  a  lumber  road. 
Its  northern  development  drew  it  naturally  to  the 
Lake  Superior  country  and  resulted,  through  the 
lumber  traffic,  in  establishing  further  south  an 
army  of  manufacturers  ~on  its  lines.  In  mineral 
traffic  it  has  not  only  a  strong  footing  in  the  iron 
and  copper  countries  of  Lake  Superior,  but  it  has 
the  lead  traffic  of  southwestern  Wisconsin.  The 
building  of  the  first  lines  into  the  Lake  Superior 
country  now  makes  necessary  new  dispositions  to 
meet  changing  conditions. 

Northern  Wisconsin  settlement  began  with  the 
felling  of  its  timber.  Wisconsin  and  Illinois 
have  in  consequence  grown  to  be  vast  manufac- 
turing plants,  but  with  the  cutting  away  of  the 
timber  the  factories  are  casting  about  for  new 
fields  of  supply  in  raw  material.  North  of  Lake 
Superior  in  a  belt  two  hundred  miles  wide  and 
three  thousand  miles  long  lies  one  of  the  last  of 
the  great  North  American  forests.  To  this  region 

188 


The  St.  Paul 

of  the  Northwest  the  factories  are  turning  for 
their  lumber,  and  the  St.  Paul  must  prepare  on 
the  south  shore  of  Lake  Superior  to  transship  this 
material  which  will  come  across  from  Canada, 
and  carry  it  to  its  manufacturers  as  far  to  the 
south  as  Rock  Island. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  individuality  of  the  St. 
Paul  Road.  It  is  too  marked  to  overlook.  From 
its  men  it  has  long  enjoyed  a  quality  of  loyalty 
that  is  exceptional.  In  the  days  of  the  great 
railroad  strike  of  1894  there  were  whole  divisions 
on  the  system  where  the  disturbance  was  never 
felt.  It  is  a  saying  that  a  man  who  once  works 
for  the  St.  Paul  always  works  for  it,  and  so  strong 
is  this  sentiment  among  the  older  men  that  even 
in  these  days  of  rampant  and  disordered  trades- 
unionism  there  is  a  leaven  of  loyalty  among  St. 
Paul  employees  that  amounts  almost  to  a  com- 
pany asset.  To-day  there  is  no  problem  more 
grave  in  American  railroad  management  than  that 
of  enlisting  the  faithful  endeavor  of  the  em- 
ployees ;  and  this  despite  the  fact  that  the  older 
men  in  the  railroad  service  set  a  remarkable  ex- 
ample of  fidelity  to  their  work.  To  continue 
to-day  to  secure  the  results  effected  by  the  railroad 
employee  of  fifteen  years  ago  is  rightly  esteemed 
a  triumph  of  management,  and  one  to  which  the 
St.  Paul  may  pretty  fairly  lay  claim.  A  general 

189 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

officer  of  the  St.  Paul  leaving  the  system  ten 
years  ago  would  return  to-day  to  find  himself 
known  by  name  to  men,  on  outlying  divisions, 
whom  he  had  never  heard  of.  The  old-fashioned 
railroad  had  this  brotherhood  feeling  from  top  to 
bottom,  and  it  is  something  we  have  lost  in  the 
enormous  growth  of  the  various  systems.  The 
spirit  when,  for  example,  the  Rock  Island  was  a 
sort  of  Cable  family  road — when  if  a  member  of 
President  Cable's  family  in  Chicago  was  ill  men 
in  Kansas  asked  for  news  from  the  sick  room — is 
perhaps  lost  forever  from  American  railroading; 
but  it  counted  in  the  traffic  results  just  the  same, 
and  any  road  that  preserves  a  spirit  of  such  per- 
sonal interest  in  its  management  is  fortunate. 

To  this  clan-like  following  of  the  men  may  be 
added  a  second  and  very  different  characteristic  of 
the  St.  Paul  Road,  namely,  a  jealousy  of  outside 
domination  in  its  affairs.  The  St.  Paul  carries 
this  to  an  extent  unexampled  in  American  rail- 
roading. It  is  the  only  considerable  American 
railroad  that  runs  its  own  sleeping-cars — an  inde- 
pendence that  is  not  only  interesting,  but  to  the 
seasoned  traveller  appealing.  Whether  it  is  the 
perverseness  01  the  public,  or  the  one-company 
power  in  American  sleeping-car  arrangements, 
there  is  an  undeniable  absence  of  sympathy  be- 
tween the  average  traveller  and  the  management 

190 


The  St.  Paul 

of  his  sleeping-car.  He  still  endures  restrictions 
that  once  heated  even  old  John  Sherman  to  the 
point  of  rebellion  in  the  United  States  Senate. 
The  St.  Paul  Road,  running  its  own  sleeping-cars, 
makes  its  own  regulations  strictly,  and  has  been 
known  to  discipline  a  porter  for  taking  a  whisk 
broom  instead  of  a  hat  brush  to  a  traveller's  felt 
hat :  the  incident  suggests  an  attention  to  details 
that  is  certainly  hopeful. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  this  keeping  of  all  the 
authority  at  home  affords  unlooked-for  advantages 
when  aggressive  methods  became  necessary.  To 
get  a  place  in  Kansas  City  and  Chicago  passenger 
traffic  the  St.  Paul  made  a  very  extensive  cam- 
paign beginning  with  the  building  of  an  expen- 
sive cut-off  to  get  a  short  line.  Advertising,  of 
course,  was  not  overlooked:  in  newspapers,  full 
back-page  advertisements  in  colors  began  to  ap- 
pear and  the  territory  was  billed  fa*  and  wide  with 
circus-like  energy.  Oddly  enough,  however,  the 
great  stroke  of  the  campaign  came  after  these  con- 
ventional methods  had  been  exhausted.  Taking 
advantage  of  its  own  control  of  its  sleeping-cars, 
the  St.  Paul,  the  first  summer  these  trains  were  run, 
ordered  the  usual  heavy  blankets  removed  from 
the  sleeping-car  berths  and  white  counterpanes 
substituted.  The  mere  announcement  seemed 
refreshing  to  summer  travellers,  and  was  enough 

191 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

to  gain  the  coveted  prestige ;  further  efforts  at 
publicity  have  seemed  unnecessary. 

In  like  manner  the  St.  Paul  keeps  its  manufac- 
turing at  home  by  building  all  of  its  locomotives 
and  freight  cars,  the  policy  being  to  call  out  new 
ideas  in  motive  power  and  rolling  stock  suited  to 
the  road's  needs.  Readiness  to  encourage  experi- 
ments is  shown  in  a  struggle,  extending  now  over 
sixteen  years,  to  perfect  the  lighting  of  passenger 
trains  by  electricity.  Only  railroad  managers  who 
have  undertaken  advances  of  this  sort  know  the 
record  of  expense  and  failure  before  success  is  at- 
tained. The  St.  Paul  has  been  not  only  the  first 
railroad  to  apply  electricity  to  train-lighting,  but 
the  first  to  bring  it  to  a  successful  issue,  with  the 
result  that  it  now  leads  all  American  roads  with 
some  three  hundred  electrically  lighted  cars:  it 
was  also  the  first  Western  road  to  adopt  the  ves- 
tibule car. 

There  is  nothing  more  indicative  of  the  whole 
spirit  of  the  Northwest  than  this  aggressive  char- 
acter of  Granger  railroading.  It  is,  after  all,  the 
public  which  is  behind  progress,  and  the  advances 
that  are  planned  daily  in  Granger  line  operating 
departments  could  never  mature  were  it  not  for 
the  quick,  ambitious  people  who  make  the  luxu- 
ries of  other  nations  their  own  necessities.  The 
people  who  live  in  this  Northwest  are  perhaps  the 

192 


The  St.  Paul 

most  alert  in  our  country.  Nowhere  else  are 
schools  both  high  and  primary  so  jealously  ad- 
vanced ;  nowhere  else  is  the  literature  of  the  day 
devoured  with  such  zest.  Climate  and  the  blend- 
ing of  many  bloods  seem  to  have  developed  extra- 
ordinarily the  faculties  that  make  for  material 
progress;  and  transportation  in  the  Northwest  is 
but  one  instance  in  which  this  is  surprising.  East- 
ern people  are  never  quite  reconciled  to  the  excel- 
lence of  passenger  train  equipment  that  greets 
them  on  every  strong  line  beyond  Chicago,  though 
there  are  men  who  foresaw  it  a  generation  ago. 
When  the  St.  Paul,  for  example,  put  on  its 
through  service  to  the  Pacific  Coast,  it  recalled  to 
the  veteran  passenger  traffic  manager,  George  H. 
Daniels,  a  prophecy  he  had  made  concerning  this 
very  thing  thirty  years  earlier,  and  the  advance 
drew  from  a  critic  so  exacting  as  himself  a  tribute 
of  praise. 

But  the  Granger  line  railroad  exploits  not  only 
itself  but  its  country.  The  St.  Paul  has  exploited 
South  Dakota  so  long  and  so  earnestly  that  it  has 
come  to  be  looked  on  by  the  State  administration 
as  a  sort  of  advertising  adjunct  of  its  own  and  is 
accorded,  after  a  manner,  official  recognition.  Nor 
are  the  efforts  of  railroads  in  exploiting  new  coun- 
try anywhere  to  be  despised.  The  Rosebud  Res- 
ervation when  thrown  open  in  Dakota  offered 

193 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

2,400  quarter-section  farms  to  homesteaders.  In- 
credible as  it  may  seem,  106,000  applications 
were  registered  for  these  farms,  and  the  applicants, 
being  in  most  instances  heads  of  families,  repre- 
sented perhaps  half  a  million  people  ;  one  hun- 
dred thousand  who  did  not  secure  farms  in  the 
allotment  were  thus  taken  into  Dakota  and  made 
familiar  with  its  resources.  Many  of  these  people 
were  drawn  from  crowded  cities  and  from  an  un- 
equal struggle  for  life  in  the  East  to  a  breath  of 
the  fresh  air  and  sunshine  of  the  West,  and  thou- 
sands of  them,  not  drawing  farms  on  the  reserva- 
tion, bought  other  farms. 

In  this  rapid  industrial  and  social  movement  of 
the  Northwest  the  St.  Paul  has  its  recognized 
place.  It  is  one  of  the  few  big  systems  that  has 
kept  absolutely  aloof  from  all  the  big  railroad 
combinations  of  the  last  six  years;  it  has  not 
played  railroad  checkers  in  any  of  the  games  that 
have  been  offered  to  it.  Beyond  the  Missouri 
River  there  is  much  for  the  St.  Paul  to  think 
about.  The  Gulf  and  the  Red  River  of  the 
North  are  already  within  the  field  of  its  vision. 
What  it  will  do  in  meeting  the  situations 
brought  about  in  the  Northwest  by  the  new 
dispositions  in  railroad  control  cannot  be  said 
beyond  this,  that  where  the  traffic  is  there  the 
St.  Paul  will  be  also. 


THE  CHICAGO  AND  NORTH- 
WESTERN 


THE    CHICAGO    AND   NORTH- 
WESTERN 

A  CONSIDERATION  of  the  unusual  strength  of  the 
Northwestern  involves  surprises  even  to  American 
railroad  men  themselves. 

It  is  said  that  a  Pennsylvania  engineer,  fishing 
one  summer  in  the  wilds  of  upper  Michigan, 
strayed  from  his  stream  and  his  guide  and  lost  him- 
self in  the  woods.  It  was  only  after  hours  of 
wandering  through  a  trackless  wilderness  that  he 
emerged,  to  his  amazement,  on  a  railroad  right-of- 
way  equipped  with  heavy  double  tracks  that  sug- 
gested his  own  division  between  Altoona  and 
Pittsburg. 

From  the  depths  of  a  forest  never  touched 
by  the  hand  of  man  he  looked  on  a  succes- 
sion of  ore  trains  thundering  past  as  fast  as 
despatchers  could  handle  them.  The  roadbed 
and  motive  power,  showing  a  physical  excel- 
lence that  he  had  not  dreamed  could  exist  west 
of  the  Alleghanies,  only  increased  his  bewilder- 
ment ;  nor  was  his  balance  restored  until  assured 
that  what  he  saw  was  not  an  illusion  but  the 

197 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Peninsular  Division  of  the  Chicago  and  North- 
western Railway. 

The  story  is  well  told — for  under  these  condi- 
tions the  heavy  Northwestern  ore  trains  are  run 
from  the  Menominee  and  the  Gogebic  iron  ranges 
through  Michigan  forests  to  the  ports  of  the  Great 
Lakes;  and  to  one  unfamiliar  with  the  volume 
of  this  extraordinary  traffic  a  sight  of  it  comes 
with  the  force  of  a  revelation. 

It  must  not  be  assumed,  however,  that  iron  ore 
is  the  backbone  of  Northwestern  traffic :  it  is  a 
feature,  and  an  important  one ;  but  it  serves  in  the 
Northwestern  story  chiefly  to  illustrate  the  unusual 
variety  of  traffic  resources  enjoyed  by  a  road  strong 
in  many  directions. 

In  the  country  of  the  Great  Lakes  lies  a  land 
of  singular  beauty  known  on  the  maps  of  a  cen- 
tury ago  as  the  Northwest  Territory.  It  stretches 
on  the  north  to  the  Lake  of  the  Woods  and  the 
sources  of  the  Mississippi,  and,  by  extension,  what 
is  now  known  as  the  Northwest  includes  the  States 
of  the  fertile  western  tributaries  of  the  upper  Mis- 
sissippi River. 

In  the  Northwest  a  climate  temperate  in  its 
vigour  unites  with  a  soil  well-nigh  inexhaustible 
in  vitality.  The  north  wind  sweeps  prairies  that 
spread  from  horizon  to  horizon  and  lie  like  glades 
among  forests  so  plentiful  and  so  rich  that  in  the 


The  Northwestern 

useful  woods  they  have  hardly  an  equal  in  the 
service  of  man.  The  Northwest  is  a  land  of  sun- 
shine and  green  fields,  where  fulfilment  waits  un- 
failingly on  promise ;  it  is  the  home  of  the  white 
pine  and  the  hard  maple,  of  the  basswood  and  the 
elm  and  the  oak,  of  the  corn  and  the  wheat  and 
the  barley,  of  the  clover  and  the  timothy  grass ; 
its  rivers,  deep  and  clear,  run  between  high  banks ; 
groves  shade  its  summer  landscapes,  and  in  the 
autumn  the  juices  of  brown  leaves  store  riches  in 
the  soil  and  stain  to  wine  the  cold,  swift  waters  of 
its  brooks. 

Frenchmen,  three  hundred  years  ago,  before 
other  white  men  had  seen  it,  mapped  this  vast 
country  to  the  south  and  west  of  what  is  now 
called  Lake  Superior.  French  explorers  were  the 
first  to  thread  its  waterways,  and  French  Jesuits 
under  its  forest  arches  set  up  their  altars  of  boughs, 
and  taught  to  the  Algonquins  and  the  Sioux  the 
faith  that  Paul  preached  at  Antioch  and  Augus- 
tine brought  to  Britain. 

Where  Jacques  Marquette  baptized  the  Illinois 
the  tribes  are  scattered ;  where  the  shores  of  their 
lake  felt  the  benediction  of  his  tread  have  arisen 
great  cities — the  neophyte  and  the  missionary  sur- 
vive only  in  statues  of  bronze.  But  history, 
kinder  than  progress,  has  preserved  in  river  and 
lake  and  strait  and  bay,  in  the  cities  and  States  of 

199 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

the  Northwest,  the  names  and  memories  of  the 
blackrobe,  the  chevalier,  and  the  Indian. 

La  Salle  was  at  the  mouth  of  the  Chicago 
River  in  1679,  and  eleven  years  later  an  English 
ambassador  had  reached  Wisconsin  seeking  an 
alliance  with  the  Miami.  In  1682  the  great 
Frenchman  set  up  on  the  Mississippi  the  standard 
of  France,  and  six  years  afterward  Perrot  had 
raised  the  cross  and  the  lilies  on  the  soil  of  Min- 
nesota. 

But  the  Hudson  Bay  Fur  Company  had  already 
been  chartered,  and  for  a  hundred  years  the  two 
most  highly  civilised  nations  of  Europe  bribed, 
goaded,  debauched,  and  cheated  the  unfortunate 
savages  of  North  America  in  their  efforts  to  obtain 
the  sovereignty  of  this  Northwest  empire.  In 
the  end  the  long  arm  of  England  prevailed,  and 
the  destinies  of  the  Northwest  were  shaped  for  a 
thousand  years. 

In  all  of  the  surprises  worked  since  1690  in  this 
Northwest  wilderness  none  is  more  remarkable 
than  that  on  the  least  promising  site  to  be  selected 
the  industrial  capital  of  the  Northwest  should  be 
built.  The  little  Chicago  River  as  an  Indian 
waterway  seems  always  to  have  had  part  in  North- 
west history.  In  1773,  William  Murray  bought 
from  the  Illini  Indians  a  farm  that  included  the 
stream.  Indeed,  for  five  shillings  and  some  mer- 

200 


The  Northwestern 

chandise,  William  purchased  a  strip  of  land  ex- 
tending from  Chicago  to  the  Mississippi.  A  small 
portion  of  this  five-shilling  farm  would  now  be 
worth  several  billions  of  dollars. 

Murray  failed,  however,  to  make  good  his  title, 
and  it  was  not  till  1833  that  the  United  Nation 
Indians  ceded  to  the  United  States  the  last  of  their 
lands  east  of  the  Mississippi  and  opened  the  North- 
west definitely  to  the  settlement  of  whites.  So 
fast  did  events  crowd  on  one  another  that  only 
twenty  months  after  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States  had  ratified  this  treaty  the  first  railroad — 
the  parent  stem  of  the  Chicago  and  Northwestern 
— was  chartered  out  of  Chicago.  Transportation, 
indeed,  was  destined  to  change  faster  than  any 
other  agency  the  character  of  the  new  territory. 
This  Galena  and  Chicago  Union  Railroad  project 
languished  for  ten  years,  but  in  1848  ten  miles  of 
the  road  were  actually  built,  and  even  so  small  a 
beginning  brought  its  significant  sequel.  The 
first  trip  was  made  over  the  ten-mile  division  by 
the  directors  and  stockholders  of  the  pioneer  road 
November  20.  On  their  return  trip  to  the  city 
they  met  a  farmer  hauling  to  Chicago  a  load  of 
wheat.  What  rate  the  directors  made  on  his 
business  does  not  appear,  but  they  came  somehow 
to  terms,  for  the  wheat  was  transferred  to  the  ob- 
servation car  and  became  the  first  grain  ever  car- 

201 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

ried  by  rail  to  what  was  afterward  the  largest  grain 
market  in  the  world.  In  the  same  year  the  first 
telegram  reached  Chicago. 

This  wagon-load  of  grain  indicated  the  future 
basis  of  the  prosperity  of  the  Granger  lines.  Grain 
has  made  the  Northwest  and  its  railroads  famous, 
and  of  the  many  vigorous  transportation  systems 
none  has  chosen  a  name  more  happily  appropriate 
to  the  territory  they  serve  than  the  Chicago  and 
Northwestern.  Ingenuity  can  find  nothing  to  add 
to  or  take  from  this  title  in  expressing  the  idea 
of  the  territorial  grain  empire  of  the  United  States, 
and  its  industrial  capital. 

The  historical  railroad  development  of  the  ter- 
ritory follows  with  simplicity  the  natural  high- 
ways of  traffic,  and  these  in  an  early  day,  even 
more  than  at  present,  converged  at  Chicago.  In 
consequence,  Chicago's  first  ten  miles  of  railroad 
ran  straight  west.  A  map  made  in  1861  would 
show  such  a  line  extended  across  the  Mississippi 
with  a  system  in  embryo  already  shown  in  addi- 
tional lines  of  eighty  and  one  hundred  miles  run- 
ning north  into  Wisconsin.  Here  already  may 
be  seen  the  bone  and  essence  of  the  Northwestern 
system — a  trunk  line  north  and  a  trunk  line  west ; 
Cedar  Rapids  a  western  terminus,  Oshkosh  a 
northern.  There  were  at  every  moment  of  ad- 
vancement two  objective  points  in  the  strategy  of 

202 


The  Northwestern 

the  Northwestern — one,  the  west,  with  the  Mis- 
souri River  as  an  objective  point;  the  other,  the 
north,  with  the  iron  and  the  copper  country  as  a 
goal — and  1870  found  the  system  with  both  aims 
achieved.  The  Northwestern  was  the  first  rail- 
road from  the  south  to  reach  the  rich  mineral  belt 
of  upper  Michigan,  and  its  first  seventy  miles  of 
track  to  the  Wisconsin  State  line,  built  on  a  gauge 
six  feet  wide,  makes  the  effort  seem  a  very  early 
one. 

More  then  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago 
Jesuit  missionaries  reported  copper  on  Lake  Supe- 
rior, and  the  most  alert  prospecting  the  world  over 
from  that  day  to  this  has  never  uncovered  beds 
of  native  copper  approaching  in  richness  and  ex- 
tent the  Lake  Superior  deposits;  nor  have  min- 
eralogists satisfactorily  determined  why  Nature 
made  there  the  immense  deposits  so  geologically 
unique.  Though  Montana  and  Arizona  have 
become  immense  producers  of  copper,  their  min- 
eral, being  in  the  usual  form  of  copper  ore,  re- 
quires for  reduction  an  intricate  and  long-drawn 
treatment.  Lake  Superior  copper  is  not  only 
simply  mined  but  it  is  noted  for  its  toughness  and 
its  exceptional  conductivity.  For  electric  currents 
it  is  invaluable,  and  it  lies  under  Lake  Superior 
rock  in  sheets  as  thinly  drawn  as  gold-leaf  and  in 
masses  weighing  500  tons  that  go  piecemeal  to 

203 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

the  smelters  and  never  pass  through  the  stamp 
mill  at  all.  The  elder  Agassiz  early  directed  at- 
tention to  the  unexampled  richness  of  Lake  Supe- 
rior copper  deposits.  So  closely  was  he  engaged 
in  the  early  modern  development  of  these  fields, 
and  so  intimate  are  the  association  of  discovery 
and  the  business  instinct  in  America,  that  the 
great  mine  of  the  north  country,  the  Calu- 
met and  Hecla,  which  boasts  a  shaft  4,900  feet 
deep  and  the  finest  mining  machinery  in  the 
world,  has  always  been  largely  owned  by  Boston 
investors. 

Iron,  however,  from  a  traffic  viewpoint,  is  in- 
comparably more  valuable  to  the  railroad  than 
copper,  and  the  Lake  Superior  iron  mines  are  the 
richest  in  the  world ;  not  alone  because  their  ores 
are  lowest  in  refractory  elements  and  highest  in 
metallic  iron,  but  because  nowhere  else  in  the 
world  have  such  large  beds  of  merchantable  ores 
been  exposed.  To  these  advantages  the  Lake 
Superior  country  adds  a  climate  that  allows  the 
continuous  operation  of  all  mines  with  under- 
ground workings.  Less  than  this  would  have 
made  Lake  Superior  strong  as  a  mineral  region  in 
the  useful  metals ;  as  it  is,  it  stands  pre-eminent ; 
nowhere  has  it  even  an  approaching  rival.  The 
first  bar  of  Lake  Superior  iron  was  drawn  through 
a  blacksmith's  forge  so  late  as  1846,  and  at 

204 


A     X      O 


A       K       0        T 


NC. 


Sujoerior 


THE   CHICAGO   AND 


M     I      N 


WESTERN    RAILWAY. 


The  Northwestern 

Carp  River  blooms  were  made  a  little  later, 
but  the  first  real  shipments  of  ore  were  started 
for  the  lower  lake  ports  in  1856.  Last  year 
the  Lake  Superior  country  produced  24,000,000 
tons  of  iron  ore ;  indeed,  the  production  of  the 
Lake  Superior  region  is  one-third  that  of  all  the 
world. 

In  this  territory  lies  one  of  the  strongest  arms 
of  the  Northwestern  system.  First  in  the  field, 
the  railroad  has  intrenched  itself  in  a  way  that 
astonishes  those  not  familiar  with  the  enormous 
traffic  possibilities  of  the  Peninsular  Division. 
The  Escanaba  ore  docks  are  the  largest  in  exist- 
ence, and  at  Ashland  the  Northwestern  has  a 
record  of  having  loaded  5,000  tons  of  iron  ore  into 
a  steamer  in  one  hour.  The  experience  of  the 
company  in  reaching  this  country  has  been  one 
of  especial  good  fortune.  Here  were  no  long  and 
profitless  desert  wastes  to  cross  to  reach  a  traffic 
goal.  Local  business  from  the  start  has  been  of 
good  volume.  Wisconsin  is  a  portion  of  that 
paradise  that  Frenchmen  discovered  when  they 
penetrated  the  Green  Bay.  Fishermen  and  hunt- 
ers still  flock  to  Wisconsin,  which,  together  with 
Minnesota,  is  in  effect  a  national  game  reserve. 
Wisconsin  is  the  land  of  barley,  small  grain,  and 
the  dairy.  Its  butter  and  cheese  help  to  feed 
Europe.  Divided  by  an  east  and  west  line,  the 

205 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

north  half  of  the  State  has  for  half  a  century  been 
a  reserve  of  timber  which  even  yet  is  not  wholly 
exhausted,  and  its  store  of  hard  woods  is  still  large. 
Men  have  said  that  with  its  timber  exhausted 
Northern  Wisconsin  would  be  worthless,  but  those 
who  know  Wisconsin  best  predict  that  within  fifty 
years  Northern  Wisconsin  will  be  the  more  valu- 
able half  of  the  State.  Where  the  pine  stood  the 
farmer  has  gone  in.  The  tamarack  swamps  are 
drained,  and  the  dry,  hardwood  regions  are  being 
cleared;  steers  have  been  turned  into  the  brush 
and  the  clearings,  and  the  dairyman  has  discovered 
in  Northern  Wisconsin  an  unsurpassed  field  for 
his  business.  It  has  been  pointed  out  to  him  that 
the  most  nutritious  of  grasses,  the  coolest  of  waters, 
and  the  most  temperate  of  summer  suns — essen- 
tials for  the  production  of  milks  that  are  the  base  of 
fine  flavoured  cheeses — are  the  heritage  of  North- 
ern Wisconsin,  and  the  Dean  of  the  College  of 
Agriculture  at  Madison  has  reminded  Wisconsin 
farmers  that  solely  in  these  climatic  conditions 
they  have  a  possession  as  precious  as  the  gold  of 
Colorado  or  the  coal  of  Pennsylvania.  Wiscon- 
sin is  like  a  mine  from  which  new  treasures  are 
continually  drawn. 

In  1867  the  Union  Pacific,  after  overcoming 
stupendous  difficulties  of  construction,  had  reached 
Cheyenne  and  was  ready  to  begin  its  crowning 

1206 


The  Northwestern 

task  of  scaling  the  Rockies.  The  Northwestern 
pushed  its  rails,  in  November,  1867,  into  Council 
Bluffs  and  began  pouring  material  into  the  Union 
Pacific  yards.  Eighteen  months  later,  under  the 
impulse  of  quickened  construction,  the  Central 
and  the  Union  track-layers  met  at  Promontory, 
Utah,  and  the  Overland  railroad  line  from  New 
York  to  San  Francisco  was  made  complete. 

The  results  to  Chicago  and  the  Northwest  were 
immediate.  The  current  of  transcontinental  travel 
set  across  the  territory  to  the  fast  growing  city  on 
the  shores  of  Lake  Michigan.  Iowa,  already 
touched  by  the  magic  of  railroad  enterprise,  grew 
with  astonishing  rapidity.  Indeed,  the  develop- 
ment of  the  upper  Mississippi  Valley  and  the 
opening  of  the  wheat  fields  and  the  corn  belt  be- 
tween 1865  and  1875  have  hardly  a  parallel  in 
the  story  of  the  nation. 

The  Chicago  and  Northwestern,  however,  with 
its  early  aims  achieved,  found  itself  only  on  the 
threshold  of  the  anxieties  of  its  career.  Lying 
immediately  west  of  the  Northwestern  lines  at  the 
Missouri  River  was  a  State  whose  traffic  possibil- 
ities could  no  longer  be  ignored.  Nebraska  is 
remarkable  in  many  ways.  Much  larger  than 
England  and  Wales,  and  larger  than  all  New 
England,  Nebraska  has  not  only  a  million  people 
but  a  million  of  cows,  and  the  cows  are  increasing 

207 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

rather  faster  than  the  people.  Moreover,  in  Ne- 
braska every  one  farms.  Railroad  managers,  as 
well  as  railroad  lawyers,  farm.  Bankers  farm  and 
physicians  farm.  By  far  the  greatest  man  that 
Nebraska  has  ever  numbered  among  her  sons,  J. 
Sterling  Morton,  farmed.  Even  her  politicians 
not  only  farm  but  from  the  pleasant  leisure  of 
successful  retirement  find  time  like  Temple  to 
write  thoughtful  essays  on  the  attractions  of  coun- 
try life.  An  abundance  of  nutritious  grasses  that 
cure  on  the  ground  cover  the  plains  of  Nebraska, 
and,  together  with  a  climate  that  has  few  draw- 
backs and  many  advantages,  make  Nebraska  a 
great  stock-raising  country.  Dairying  naturally 
follows.  Nebraska  lays  a  claim  to  the  greatest 
number  of  native  pasture  and  hay  grasses  of  any 
State,  and  proves  its  assertions,  in  part,  by  produc- 
ing the  finest  feeding  cattle.  In  the  eastern  por- 
tion of  the  State  are  20,000,000  acres  of  high-class 
farm  lands,  while  in  the  western  are  29,000,000 
acres  of  grazing  and  hay  lands.  Again,  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  say  precisely  where  the  line  divides,  for 
down  in  the  southwest  corner  of  the  State,  in  the 
winter  wheat  country,  the  banner  wheat  station 
on  the  Burlington  road  lies  on  the  one  hundredth 
meridian.  Due  north  of  this,  200  miles,  a  little 
northwestern  town,  Newport,  ships  more  hay  than 
is  marketed  from  any  one  other  point  in  the  world. 

208 


The  Northwestern 

Nebraska,  too,  though  young  in  dairying,  has  the 
largest  creamery  in  the  world,  as  well  as  the  ter- 
minals and  headquarters  of  twenty  railroad  sys- 
tems. Nebraska  is  proud  among  sister  States  of 
its  smallest  percentage  of  illiteracy,  and  its  soil 
will  grow  everything  from  alfalfa  and  the  sugar 
beet  to  chicory  and  corn.  The  small  grains,  not- 
ably winter  wheat,  are  Nebraskan  products ;  but 
her  most  valuable  possession  is  the  soil  and  climate 
that  have  yielded  in  a  single  year  250,000,000 
bushels  of  corn. 

In  the  support  of  human  and  animal  life  no 
cereal  crop  is  so  valuable  to  mankind  as  corn, 
and  those  scientists  who  place  at  1,000  the  total 
worth  of  cereals  to  the  world,  accord  to  corn 
266  points,  or  more  than  one  quarter  of  the  whole 
percentage. 

Moreover,  the  lands  of  Nebraska  lie  in  a  belt 
that  has  almost  a  natural  monopoly  in  corn-raising. 
New  small  grain  districts  are  continually  being 
discovered  the  world  over.  Corn  can  be  raised  in 
this  district  only,  famous  as  the  corn  belt  of  the 
United  States,  and  the  prosperity  of  a  territory  such 
as  this  is  indicated  in  the  single  statement  that  one 
of  its  States,  Iowa,  has  more  banks  than  any  State 
in  the  Union.  Nebraska  reflects  its  extraordinary 
corn  strength  in  stock-feeding ;  besides  its  milch 
cows,  it  counted,  on  January  ist,  nearly  two  and 

209 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

one-half  million  head  of  other  cattle.  The  State 
has,  too,  the  most  unlooked-for  and  pleasant  side- 
lines of  activity.  Besides  its  creditable  Beet  Sugar 
industry  Nebraska  is  an  unrivalled  seed  State :  it 
supplies  Georgia  with  its  famed  water-melon  seed 
and  Maine  with  the  seed  for  its  sugar  corn.  Of 
the  vine  and  sweet-corn  seeds,  Nebraska  supplies 
more  than  all  other  States  combined. 

This  great  trans-Missouri  State  was,  in  a  word, 
one  which  in  Northwestern  territorial  strategy 
could  not  be  overlooked ;  and  beyond  Nebraska 
there  were  further  prizes.  On  the  extreme  west- 
ern boundary  of  South  Dakota  lies  a  strange 
geological  upheaval  known  as  the  Black  Hills. 
It  is  one  of  the  three  great  gold  districts  of  the 
country.  The  Black  Hills,  indeed,  have  taken  to 
themselves,  seemingly  without  dispute,  the  title 
of  being  the  richest  hundred  miles  square  on  the 
face  of  the  earth.  They  can  already  lay  claim  to 
the  largest  existing  gold  mine,  and  in  reality  only 
a  beginning  has  been  made  in  exposing  their 
mineral  wealth.  Estimates  based  on  Government 
reports  and  surveys  place  the  value  of  the  un- 
mined  gold  and  silver  at  a  billion  of  dollars.  The 
ores  of  the  Homestake  mine  lie  in  bodies  so  large 
that  a  century  will  hardly  suffice  to  work  them 
out,  and  the  Homestake  has  already  sent  to  the 
mints  $90,000,000  in  gold  bullion.  It  crushes 

210 


The   Northwestern 

3,000  tons  of  ore  every  twenty-four  hours,  and  its 
working,  together  with  that  of  other  gold  proper- 
ties, supports  two  large  and  wealthy  cities — Dead- 
wood  and  Lead — in  the  most  picturesque  corner 
of  the  United  States.  In  this  far  Northwest  the 
Black  Hills  offer  a  climate  so  tempting  that  many 
people  live  there  for  its  excellence,  and  the  Hot 
Springs  of  the  Black  Hills  draw  visitors  from 
every  quarter. 

Skirting  the  Black  Hills  again  on  the  south  the 
extreme  western  terminus  of  the  Northwestern 
penetrates  Wyoming,  a  mountain  country  with 
all  the  rugged  strength  of  the  American  Rockies. 
From  Wyoming  and  Montana  come  the  range 
cattle  and  the  mountain  valleys  are  filled  with 
sheep.  Montana  supplies  a  tenth  of  our  wool  and 
Wyoming  follows  very  closely  in  production. 
Along  highways  that  stretch  hundreds  of  miles 
and  are  strung  with  telephone  wires,  cattle  on 
hoof  are  driven  to  Casper  and  shipped  to  the 
packing  centres.  The  country  is  most  interest- 
ing. Here  are  the  fountain-heads  of  the  great 
Missouri  River,  and  beyond,  the  natural  wonders 
of  the  landscape  have  been  preserved  by  the  Gov- 
ernment in  its  National  park.  Across  Wyoming 
to  the  sources  of  the  Wind  River,  over  the  con- 
tinental divide  and  down  to  Jackson  Lake,  one 
may  ride  a  bicycle  or  a  pony  for  300  miles  into 

211 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

the  valley  of  the  Yellowstone.  The  Wyoming 
sky  is  never  clouded  nor  is  its  summer  ever 
oppressive.  In  this  thin,  clear  mountain  air  rest 
knits  into  vigour  the  sinews  of  the  jaded  city 
man  and  charges  his  storage  batteries  with  sun- 
shine. 

The  map  of  recent  railroad  development — the 
Northwestern  has  built  1,300  miles  of  track  west 
of  the  Missouri  River — follows  clearly  the  very 
earliest  movement  of  Western  railroading,  and  in 
this  transcontinental  advance  the  Granger  lines 
have  kept  their  link  one  of  the  strongest  in  the 
chain.  When  the  Northwestern  opened  the  first 
double-tracked  gateway  from  Chicago  to  the  Mis- 
souri River  it  was  providing,  as  every  prudent 
management  must,  not  alone  for  present  but  for 
future  needs.  A  system  able  to  count  among  its 
traffic  mines  cities  like  Chicago,  Milwaukee, 
Duluth,  Superior,  St.  Paul,  Minneapolis,  Sioux 
City,  Des  Moines,  Omaha,  Lincoln,  Deadwood, 
and  Lead  is  fortunate,  but  must  always  be  alert. 
Northwestern  management  has  never,  since  the 
system  really  found  itself,  failed  to  meet  the  needs 
of  its  territory.  If  it  is  closely  in  touch  with  its 
own  people — the  shippers  along  its  lines — it  is 
because  no  cause  has  ever  been  given  them  to 
feel  that  their  interests  were  last  to  be  considered 
in  the  Northwestern  councils. 

212 


THE  REBUILDING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 
RAILROAD 


<HiIcarg0j 


Jefferson  City 


RAlton 
St.  LouisVlE-St.  Louis 


THE    CHICAGO    AND    ALTON    RAILWAY 


THE  REBUILDING  OF  AN  AMERICAN 
RAILROAD 

IN  American  railroad  management  there  is  one 
phase  of  railroad  building  of  which  little,  save  in 
a  general  way,  is  known — the  phase  in  which  a 
successful  railroad  operator  observing  neglected 
possibilities  in  another  line,  acquires  it,  rips  it  to 
pieces,  and  from  the  fragments  builds  up  what  is 
practically  a  new  railroad. 

An  Eastern  proverb  tells  us  that  many  pass; 
one  sees.  The  seeing  man,  in  such  an  instance,  is 
the  man  that  knows,  just  a  bit  better  than  his  fel- 
lows, railroad  possibilities.  This  man,  finding  the 
opportunity,  enlists  the  capital,  buys  a  railroad  at 
what  may  seem  to  the  owners  and  to  the  public 
a  very  high  price,  and  proceeds  to  demonstrate 
that  the  price  is  in  reality  a  low  one,  in  this :  that 
where  the  property  had  with  difficulty  earned  one 
dollar  it  could  readily  be  made  to  earn  two. 

In  this  demonstration  the  buyer  of  the  railroad 
faces  his  real  problem — that  of  developing  in  his 
purchase  a  greater  earning  power  than  it  has  thus 
far  shown,  and  the  work  is  not  unlike  that  of  a 

215 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

man  who  buys  an  armory  built  for  the  manufac- 
ture of  the  Springfield  musket,  and  undertakes  to 
transform  it  into  a  plant  capable  of  turning  out  a 
modern  rapid-fire  gun. 

As  an  example  in  an  extraordinary  degree  of 
what  may  be  done  in  the  rebuilding  of  an  Amer- 
ican railroad  I  have  chosen  the  story  of  a  line, 
the  Chicago  and  Alton  Railway,  with  terminals  in 
three  great  inland  American  cities — cities  that 
show  every  characteristic  of  the  national  activity 
and  achievement. 

There  are  other  reasons  for  citing  this  partic- 
ular example  of  the  possibilities  in  railroad  re- 
building. The  case  is  one  which  affords  in  the 
first  place  very  sharp  contrasts  between  the  old 
condition  and  the  new.  Moreover,  being  a  fast 
passenger  line,  the  reconstruction  has  called  for 
the  very  highest  refinements  in  track  excellence 
and  equipment;  and  as  a  competitor  for  a  heavy 
freight  traffic,  in  a  territory  where  American  rail- 
roads have  for  a  long  time  put  forth  the  most 
efficient  efforts  to  do  business  inexpensively,  this 
road  required  the  highest  order  of  resource  in 
management  to  put  it  ahead  of  its  neighbours. 

For  many  years  the  road  has  enjoyed  a  great 
reputation.  The  railroad  world  as  well  as  the 
travelling  public  believed  in  it.  The  duty  of  in- 
forming the  surprised  operating  department  that 

216 


Rebuilding  of  an  American  Railroad 

they  had,  in  point  of  fact,  no  road  at  all,  fell  upon 
the  new  president  whose  task  was  to  make  the 
railroad  wholly  over.  The  old  staff  then  learned 
to  their  consternation  that  their  track  was  an 
excuse,  their  motive  power  hardly  more  than  a 
reminiscence,  their  equipment  a  curio,  and  their 
reputation  a  fiction. 

The  road,  one  of  the  first  built  out  of  Chicago, 
was  one  embodying  the  most  interesting  historical 
association ;  it  had  run  the  first  sleeping-car  ever 
offered  to  the  public  in  the  world ;  it  had  run  the 
first  chair-car  ever  built  and  the  first  dining-car. 

But  in  meeting  competition,  history  is  not  re- 
source. The  tracks,  built  in  an  early  day,  fol- 
lowed closely  the  configuration  of  the  country. 
If  a  plough  was  used  on  the  original  right-of-way,  it 
was  beyond  doubt  a  shallow  plough,  and  the  grades 
reflected  very  faithfully  the  hills  and  the  hollows  of 
the  prairie.  The  bridges  and  the  culverts  were 
chiefly  of  wood,  and  such  ballast  as  had  been  used 
was  the  spoil  of  convenient  gravel  banks :  a  little 
stone,  some  slag — all  worn  in  the  service.  One 
pet  the  road  had :  a  graceful  steel  bridge  of  enor- 
mous proportions,  costing  half  a  million  dollars 
and  spanning  the  Missouri  River.  This,  again, 
was  of  rare  historic  interest,  for  it  must  always  bear 
the  distinction  of  having  been  the  first  steel  bridge 
ever  built  in  the  world.  But  in  the  rebuilding  of 

217 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

the  system,  so  unique  a  claim  to  distinction  could 
not  save  it,  and  to  the  horror  of  the  operating  de- 
partment the  five-hundred-thousand-dollar  bridge 
went  to  the  scrap.  The  fact  is,  all  these  pictu- 
resque features  of  the  pioneer  line  had  had  their 
day.  That  which  yesterday  was  a  railroad  mar- 
vel becomes  to-morrow  a  curiosity. 

The  first  order  to  the  engineering  department 
of  the  division  where  the  traffic  converges  toward 
Chicago  called  for  a  maximum  of  -f^  per  cent, 
grades — sixteen  feet  to  the  mile.  Seventy-pound 
rails  went  to  branches  and  to  passing  tracks,  and 
on  the  main  line  eighty-pound  rails  were  called 
for  from  end  to  end  of  the  system.  While  steam 
shovels  were  tearing  down  the  Illinois  hills,  bridge 
engineers  were  ripping  out  trestles  and  culverts, 
and  the  false  work  was  going  in  at  the  Missouri 
River  for  the  new  bridge,  a  million-dollar  steel 
bridge,  capable  of  carrying  the  huge  locomotives 
and  the  fifty-five-ton  capacity  cars  that  were  being 
built  for  the  new  owners.  To  eliminate  curvature 
and  reduce  gradients  the  original  right-of-way  was 
in  places  wholly  abandoned. 

All  this  was  done,  of  necessity,  without  sus- 
pending regular  traffic.  While  the  bridges  were 
being  rebuilt  the  new  motive  power  and  car-equip- 
ment were  under  way.  The  heaviest  freight  en- 
gines previously  owned  had  been  of  fifty-five  tons 

218 


Rebuilding  of  an  American  Railroad 

and  were  capable,  in  condition,  of  hauling  thirty 
cars  of  twenty-five  tons  each ;  but  the  engines 
had  been  allowed  to  deteriorate  until  not  above 
eighty  per  cent,  of  that  capacity  could  be  obtained. 
The  new  engines  of  the  consolidation  type  for 
freight  traffic  weigh  one  hundred  and  sixty-five 
tons  and  haul  one  hundred  freight  cars.  The 
passenger  power  consisted  of  forty  to  fifty  ton 
engines  capable  of  hauling  five  to  seven  of  the 
coaches  of  their  day  at  high  speed.  Such  engines 
have  been  replaced  by  modern  engines  of  one 
hundred  and  thirty-five  tons,  while  for  especially 
heavy  passenger  service,  of  which  the  road  has 
more  than  any  line  in  this  territory,  exceptionally 
large  engines  have  been  provided,  recent  addi- 
tions including  the  two  most  powerful  express 
passenger  engines  in  the  world.  The  largest  pas- 
senger engine  in  use  on  the  Alton  during  the 
World's  Fair  in  Chicago,  caught  by  a  photog- 
rapher beside  one  of  the  engines  used  during  the 
St.  Louis  World's  Fair,  would  show  strikingly 
the  advance  in  motive  power  during  the  interval 
that  has  elapsed  between  two  international  expo- 
sitions. 

In  freight-car  equipment,  twenty  and  twenty- 
five  ton  capacity  wooden  gondola  cars  were  re- 
placed by  fifty-five-ton  capacity  steel  gondolas, 
and  the  proportion  of  the  weight  of  car  to  load 

219 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

was  reduced  one-third  at  a  stroke.  Moreover, 
the  use  of  so  high-capacity  cars  has  reduced  train 
friction  to  an  equal  degree.  Acquiring  a  line 
that  had  always  enjoyed  a  heavy  passenger  traffic, 
the  new  owners,  where  they  had  found  fifty-feet 
coaches,  built  coaches  seventy  feet  long,  and  by 
ingeniously  installing  seats  of  a  modern  type  as 
well  as  more  comfortable  than  those  of  earlier 
models,  they  have  succeeded  in  accommodating 
in  the  new  cars  twice  the  number  of  passengers 
provided  for  ;n  the  old.  In  the  cars  of  to-day 
every  feature  of  equipment  helps  to  minimise  the 
fatigue  of  travel.  Even  local  travel  is  tempted 
by  all  the  comforts  that  can  be  offered  to  invite  a 
day's  shopping  in  the  city;  wide  vestibules  have 
been  provided  for  even  the  least  ostentatious  of 
the  daily  trains,  and  so  rigid  are  the  present  rules 
that  the  operating  department  will  not  receive 
from  any  foreign  line  a  passenger  car  without 
vestibules.  New  ideas,  too,  have  been  so  far  en- 
couraged that  the  road  which  ran  the  first  dining- 
car  in  the  world  clings  to  its  prestige  of  offering 
not  only  every  variety  of  dining  and  cafe  cars, 
but  has  recently  evolved  a  grill-room  car,  the  very 
name  of  which  appeals  seductively  to  luxury- 
loving  Americans. 

Of  the  important  problems,  however,  that  con- 
front the  railway  traffic  manager,  the  most  serious 

220 


Rebuilding  of  an  American  Railroad 

are  those  concerned  with  terminal  facilities,  and 
if  these  are  serious  for  passenger  business,  for 
freight  traffic  they  are  vital;  the  railroads  that 
are  first  to  enter  and  to  secure  terminals  in  a  great 
city  are  the  envy  and  despair  of  all  newcomers. 

With  every  year  the  position  of  the  roads  hav- 
ing the  oldest,  which  usually  means  the  best,  ter- 
minals becomes  more  nearly  impregnable,  and  the 
instances  are  many  in  which  one  road  holds  by  a 
grip  stronger  than  that  of  the  most  conceivably 
powerful  monetary  combination  the  traffic  of  a 
given  district  in  a  large  city — at  times  of  an  entire 
city,  as  has  been  seen  in  Pittsburg,  for  example,  or 
in  San  Francisco.  If  its  siding  tracks  are  in,  its 
yards  established,  and  public  streets  afterward  cut 
off  all  possibilities  of  new  roads  entering,  the  older 
road  has  the  most  complete  of  monopolies.  No 
more  impressive  lesson  in  the  science  of  American 
railroading  has  ever  been  supplied  than  in  a  con- 
sideration of  the  policy  pursued  by  the  early 
owners  of  the  railroad  here  discussed.  Questioned 
as  to  what  most  struck  them  in  the  conditions 
prevailing  on  the  system  they  had  determined  to 
acquire,  the  rebuilders  replied,  as  one  man  and  in 
precisely  these  words :  "  An  absolute  lack  of  ter- 
minal facilities."  The  answer  illustrated  better 
than  pages  of  comment  the  difference  between 
new  and  old  ideas  in  American  railway  manage- 

221 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

ment.  It  is  hardly  enough  to  say  that  in  this  in- 
stance the  old  management  was  a  capable  and  a 
brainy  one.  It  was  noted  in  the  whole  railway 
world  for  its  clear-cut,  unswerving,  money-mak- 
ing ability.  The  policy  of  keeping  out  of  debt 
was  closely  followed,  and  the  earnings  went  in 
an  ever-swelling  stream  straight  to  the  dividend 
account. 

It  was  not  until  the  revolution  that  has  marked 
the  last  ten  years  in  American  railroading  took 
place,  and  not  until  buyers  began  to  look  over 
the  railroad  field  for  new  opportunities,  that  the 
lack  of  foresight  in  such  methods  of  management 
became  apparent.  This  road,  enjoying  one  of  the 
earliest  entrances  into  Chicago,  had  had  its  pick 
of  terminal  facilities  such  as  would  now  be  pre- 
cious beyond  dreams. 

Not  the  offer  to  any  railroad  of  unlimited  traffic 
tonnage,  nor  the  possession  of  the  most  perfect 
possible  equipment  to  handle  it,  could  equal  in 
value  to-day  really  adequate  Chicago  terminals. 
Yet,  twenty-five  years  ago  so  slight  was  the  value 
set  even  by  prudent  managers  on  such  facilities 
that  the  first  owners  of  this  road  sold  a  one-half 
interest  in  their  Chicago  terminals  to  a  powerful 
Eastern  connection  and,  more  incredible  still,  sur- 
rendered in  the  transfer  their  own  control  of  them. 
We  have  biblical  authority  for  the  story  that  Esau 

222 


Rebuilding  of  an  American  Railroad 

sold  his  birthright  for  a  mess  of  pottage.  But 
Esau  could,  at  least,  have  pleaded  urgency — he 
needed  the  soup ;  the  folly  of  a  railroad's  parting 
with  its  birthright  in  the  very  best  of  Chicago 
terminals,  to  distribute  among  stockholders  their 
price  in  seven  and  eight  per  cent,  dividends,  was 
reserved  for  our  own  day  and  generation. 

In  the  next  most  important  city  on  the  system, 
St.  Louis,  the  road  never  took  title  to  a  foot  of 
terminals,  its  facilities  being  wholly  rented ;  worse 
still,  it  acquired  no  interest  in  the  company  con- 
trolling them.  In  the  third  great  commercial 
centre  entered,  Kansas  City,  terminals  ordinarily 
good  when  acquired  were  found  to  be  for  to-day 
not  only  insufficient  but  unconnected  by  owner- 
ship with  the  main  line.  What  such  mistakes  on 
the  system  have  since  cost,  the  financial  interests 
now  in  control  do  not  state ;  it  is  enough  that  they 
have  been  corrected.  The  truth  is,  the  buyers 
in  such  a  case  have  no  ground  to  complain. 
But  there  is  a  third  great  and  undefined  party 
to  all  questions  of  railroad  management,  namely, 
the  public,  or  that  portion  of  the  public  which 
is  dependent  on  a  particular  road  for  its  transpor- 
tation facilities. 

The  Alton  being  once  acquired,  it  became  the 
policy  of  the  new  owners  to  increase  the  facilities 
of  the  public  along  their  line  for  doing  business. 

223 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

A  single  instance  of  what  has  been  accomplished 
in  this  line  is  so  striking  that  it  will  serve  for  all 
comment  on  the  point.  Five  years  ago  this  road 
had  no  coal  traffic.  Its  tracks  have  always  covered 
the  richest  coal-fields  in  the  West ;  yet  it  hauled 
no  coal.  To  ride  over  the  road  to-day  and  to 
pass,  at  the  car  windows,  hundreds  and  hundreds 
of  huge,  steel  gondola  cars  loaded  with  bright, 
newly  mined  coal  in  lump  and  block  and  to  see 
other  hundreds  of  such  cars  lying  about  division 
and  terminal  yards  would  make  the  statement 
difficult  to  credit.  Yet  this  enormous  and  really 
extraordinary  development  of  freight  traffic  in  so 
few  years  has  been  the  immediate  result  of  merely 
providing  the  road  with  adequate  cars,  engines, 
and  yards  to  care  for  the  traffic,  and  the  reducing 
of  grades  and  curvature  sufficiently  to  enable  the 
road  to  make  a  rate  on  the  business  that  would 
protect  the  local  shipper  of  coal  in  competitive 
markets.  So  rapid  and  so  constant  has  been  the 
success  of  endeavours  in  this  one  direction  that 
on  this  road  during  the  present  year  two  of  the 
largest  mines  in  Illinois  are  being  opened — mines 
equipped  with  modern  washeries  and  with  a  pro- 
ducing capacity  each  of  two  thousand  tons  a  day. 
In  five  years  this  railroad,  beginning  with  nothing, 
has  come  to  take  second  place  in  tonnage  records 
from  Western  coal-fields,  and  during  the  great 

224 


Rebuilding  of  an  American  Railroad 

hard-coal  strike  its  daily  contribution  of  two  hun- 
dred cars  of  soft  coal  to  Chicago  helped  to  avert 
an  actual  famine  in  the  great  manufacturing  centre. 
Another  decisive  feature  of  management  obtains 
in  the  care  of  this  newly  fostered  coal  traffic. 
The  road  has  made  it  a  policy  to  open  no  mines 
of  its  own,  and  when  there  is  a  shortage  of  cars  the 
suspicious  shipper  knows,  at  least,  that  the  railroad 
he  is  dependent  on  for  his  daily  bread  is  not  pro- 
viding its  own  mines  with  equipment  when  he 
himself  is  unable  to  get  what  he  needs.  The 
point  is  a  slight  one,  but  good  management  rests 
on  details ;  it  rests  also,  not  alone  in  keeping  faith 
with  the  public,  but  in  seeming  to  keep  faith. 

What  it  means  to  make  over  a  railroad  for 
such  modern  traffic  requirements  is  reflected 
sharply  in  the  work  put  upon  the  construction 
department.  Working  out  of  Chicago,  track 
elevation  was  pushed  until  every  railroad  grade 
crossing  from  the  terminal  station  to  the  suburban 
yards  has  been  eliminated.  The  grades  receiving 
the  heaviest  of  the  traffic  as  it  centred  toward 
Chicago  were  reduced  until  they  gave  the  rebuilt 
road  the  lowest  maximum  grade  of  any  road  en- 
tering Chicago  from  the  Western  coal-fields.  At 
the  very  outset  the*  work  of  double-tracking  was 
begun;  to  provide  for  heavy  cars  and  engines, 
heavier  rails  have  been  spread  south  and  west, 

225 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

until  today  over  one-half  the  total  mileage  of  the 
entire  system  shows  new  steel.  The  work  falling 
on  the  bridge  department  was  continuous  and 
exacting.  While  shops  were  being  enlarged,  en- 
gine-houses rebuilt,  and  turn-tables  lengthened,  the 
track  elevation  at  Chicago  called  unceasingly  for 
viaducts,  and  the  traffic  conditions  everywhere  on 
the  system  demanded  new  bridges  for  the  motive 
power.  Yet,  so  well  does  American  engineering 
meet  American  exactions  that  a  heavy  traffic  was 
maintained  without  serious  interruption  while  on 
the  system  practically  all  new  bridges  were  being 
put  in.  Better  conception  of  the  undertaking 
may  be  had  when  it  is  considered  that  on  less 
than  a  thousand  miles  of  trackage  three  hundred 
and  eighteen  bridges  were  replaced  within  four 
years.  Of  these,  one  hundred  and  fourteen  bridges 
were  wholly  done  away  with  by  the  cast-iron  pipe 
and  the  concrete  arch — the  progress  in  the  use  of 
concrete  work  being  one  of  the  most  striking 
features  of  recent  bridge  construction.  But  be- 
sides the  great  bridge  across  the  Missouri  and 
four  solid-floor  creosoted  trestles,  one  hundred 
and  twenty-two  steel  bridges  also  were  installed. 

The  elimination  of  curvature,  pushed  till  the 
maximum  had  been  reduced  to  four  degrees,  is 
still  in  progress,  and  so  far  has  bad  curvature 
been  taken  care  of  that  an  engineman  familiar 

226 


Rebuilding  of  an  American  Railroad 

with  a  division  five  years  ago  would  hardly 
recognise  the  right-of-way  in  daylight.  Long 
restful  stretches  of  straight  track  have  been  devel- 
oped until  there  are  now  on  the  system  many 
tangents  of  from  fifteen  to  twenty  miles ;  there  is 
at  least  one  tangent  of  twenty-nine  miles  and  one 
extraordinary  stretch  of  forty-five  miles  of  track, 
straight  as  an  arrow's  flight.  Even  when  the 
curve  is  reached,  the  traveller  in  the  Pullman  is 
deceived.  The  track  dip,  or  superelevation,  at  a 
curve  is  for  speed  purposes  always  a  compromise. 
Passenger  trains  take  curves  at  a  speed  of  from 
seventy  to  eighty  miles  an  hour,  but  to  elevate 
for  such  a  speed  would  mean  too  much  resistance 
for  the  heavy  freight  trains  taking  the  same 
curves  at  twenty  miles  an  hour.  Curves  are 
therefore  elevated  for  a  speed  of  sixty  miles  an 
hour,  and  a  higher  speed  means  a  slight  shock  to 
a  Pullman  train. 

So  clever,  however,  have  the  construction 
engineers  become  that  even  this  difficulty  has 
been  obviated.  Ingenious  easement  curves,  or 
"  spirals,"  have  been  introduced,  and  they  heel  a 
fast  train  so  gradually  to  the  dip  needed  for  the 
radius  that  the  lurching  is  wholly  avoided,  and 
the  traveller  can  be  sent  around  a  curve  without 
knowing  it,  the  effect  being  like  riding  a  con- 
tinuous tangent.  Such  devices  for  the  making 

227 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

of  passenger  travel  safe  and  easy  are  within  the 
reach  of  any  railroad ;  it  is  their  expense  that 
keeps  them  from  being  generally  adopted.  Un- 
less a  road  caters  to  a  large  passenger  traffic  the 
management  will  not  stand  for  such  estimates. 

In  doing  away  in  modern  construction  with 
curves  a  more  notable  instance  of  what  is  possible 
than  that  shown  in  alignment  near  Streator,  Il- 
linois, would  be  hard  to  find.  Here,  directly  be- 
side the  new  stretch  of  straight  track,  the  old 
roundabout  track,  the  long  fill,  and  a  spindling 
steel  bridge,  such  as  many  roads  would  be  proud 
of,  may  be  seen  lying  wholly  abandoned.  With- 
in half  a  mile  a  perfect  succession  of  reverse 
curves  have  been  eliminated,  and  to-day  the  new 
line  has  resolved  itself  very  simply  into  a  long 
tangent  with  a  curve  at  each  end. 

The  initial  cost  often  deters  railroads  from 
radical  efforts  to  rid  themselves  of  expensive  blun- 
ders such  as  these  in  original  construction.  There 
are,  however,  unexpected  compensations.  In  this 
instance,  hardly  had  the  change  of  track  been 
made  before  negotiations  were  under  way  to  sell 
intact  to  a  trolley-line,  building  hard  by,  the 
abandoned  right-of-way,  the  big  fill,  and  the  long 
bridge.  The  buying  and  selling  of  second-hand 
locomotives,  second-hand  cars,  and  second-hand 
rails  is  a  profitable  business  among  jobbers  in  rail- 

228 


Rebuilding  of  an  American  Railroad 

road  junk;  worn-out  rock  ballast  even  now  finds 
ready  purchasers  among  trolley-lines ;  and  we  may 
yet  see  among  enterprising  scrap-dealers  announce- 
ments of  special  sales  of  discarded  steel  bridges 
and  bargain  days  in  second-hand  curves. 

Mention  has  been  made  of  ballast-floor  bridges, 
and  the  phrase  is  attractive.  It  is  hard  to  believe 
that  the  idea  is  quite  new,  and  to  realise  how 
much  the  ballast-floor  bridge  contributes  in  com- 
fort and  safety  to  railway  travel.  The  ballast- 
floor  carries  the  through  train  noiselessly  over  the 
long,  heavy  plate-girder  bridge  and  subdues  the 
roaring  viaduct  into  a  span  of  peace  and  quiet  for 
the  nerve-worn  suburbanite. 

The  construction  is  really  so  simple  and  the 
results  so  extraordinary  that  it  is  a  mystery  the 
ballast-floor  bridge  should  not  have  been  used 
long  ago.  Yet,  the  railroad  whose  rebuilding  we 
have  followed  was  the  first  steam  railroad  to  ap- 
ply a  ballast-floor  to  steel  bridges  and  to  regular 
track-work.  The  two  great  merits  of  the  idea  are, 
first,  safety ;  if  a  train  leaves  the  track  the  bridge 
ties  bedded  in  standard  rock-ballast  cannot  be 
bunched.  Bunching  the  ties  under  the  wheels 
of  a  derailed  engine  means  the  weakening  of  the 
bridge  structure,  indeed,  its  possible  collapse  un- 
der a  wreck.  More  than  this,  the  ballast-floor 
does  entirely  away  with  the  booming  vibration 

229 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

under  the  passenger  car,  and  the  commuter  whose 
nerves  are  still  racked  night  and  morning  by 
viaducts  may  know  that  his  railroad  has  not 
reached  the  ballast-floor  stage  and  may  protest  ac- 
cordingly. A  creosoted  pine  floor  of  8  x  8  tim- 
bers is  laid  on  the  steel  girders  of  any  bridge 
structure  and  on  this  rock-ballast  is  dumped,  the 
ties  being  laid  in  the  ballast  in  the  usual  way. 
Neither  above  nor  below  the  bridge  is  there  any 
material  vibration,  and  the  resounding  terrors  of 
a  steel-plate  floor  are  no  more ;  applied  to  the  sys- 
tems of  elevated  roads  in  city  streets  the  ballast- 
floor  would  solve  the  terrible  noise  problem  at 
once.  The  thorough  ballasting  of  a  railroad  is 
in  itself  a  serious  undertaking  and  on  the  Alton 
a  system  of  regular  inspection,  supplemented  by 
annual  competitive  prizes  for  excellence  in  main- 
tenance, keeps  alive  at  all  times  a  keen  interest 
in  the  work  among  section  foremen  and  track 
supervisors. 

With  the  engineering  department  thus  busy, 
the  operating  department  found  itself  over- 
whelmed with  problems  of  transportation.  The 
mere  change  of  train-running  on  the  double  track 
from  the  old-fashioned  left-hand  way  to  the  new 
right-hand  way,  meant  the  changing  of  every 
switch  to  secure  trailing  instead  of  facing  points 
and  the  rebuilding  of  all  interlocking  plants.  To 

230 


Rebuilding  of  an  American  Railroad 

strengthen  the  work  of  the  operating  department, 
the  railroad  world  has  been  drawn  upon  for  the 
most  effective  safety  devices  in  the  operation  of 
trains.  Long  stretches  of  track,  in  one  instance 
covering  a  distance  of  sixty-five  miles,  are  pro- 
vided with  continuous  electric  signals  which  pro- 
tect moving  trains,  stations,  grades,  and  curves. 
Previously  to  the  rebuilding  there  were  compar- 
atively few  interlocking  signals  on  the  whole  line 
to  protect  railroad  grade  crossings. 

The  greatest  obstacle  found  by  the  rebuilders 
in  the  economical  operating  of  the  motive  power 
was  a  uniformly  bad  water-supply.  Hard  water 
continually  ruined  the  boilers.  With  the  deter- 
mination to  check  this  enormous  waste  of  main- 
tenance, pumping  stations  were  installed,  reser- 
voirs impounded,  and  soft  water  secured  at  all  costs 
for  the  boilers.  But  to  the  public  the  most  inter- 
esting feature  about  such  efforts  is  to  learn  of  the 
sometimes  unexpected  results  that  follow  them. 
A  large  reservoir  impounded  for  water-supply, 
near  a  prosperous  Illinois  town,  incidentally  trans- 
formed a  series  of  gullies  and  hollows  into  a  beau- 
tiful lake.  The  townspeople  were  quick  to  note 
the  change  in  a  landscape  that  had  been  for  gen- 
erations commonplace  and  uninteresting.  They 
asked  permission  to  stock  the  new  sheet  of  water 
with  black  bass,  and  when  they  had  fish  in  plenty 

231 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

they  wanted  a  country  club.  The  railroad  people 
gave  them  a  lease  of  the  lands  surrounding  the 
lake,  and  to-day  the  entire  tract  has  been  made 
into  a  park  with  the  lake  for  its  centre;  from  a 
knoll  a  shady  club-house  overlooks  the  water. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  convince  the  people  of 
this  town  that  primitive  ideas  in  railroading 
should  be  adhered  to;  they  have  become  believ- 
ers in  progress. 

Side  by  side  with  the  reduction  of  waste  in  en- 
gine maintenance  has  gone  effort  along  every  line 
in  the  reduction  of  operating  expenses.  Feeding 
the  engine,  for  example,  has  been  reduced  to  so 
fine  a  point  that  a  locomotive  may  take  water, 
coal,  and  sand  all  at  the  same  moment.  Below  the 
engine  as  it  stands  the  cinders  may  be  dumped 
into  steel  buggies.  From  these  they  are  dumped 
in  turn,  automatically,  into  conveyers  that  load 
them  on  dump  cars,  and  the  cars  spread  them 
where  wanted  on  the  track;  not  once  are  they 
touched  by  manual  labour.  Such  a  coaling  sta- 
tion, supporting  a  seventy-ton  bin  over  a  scale 
and  handling  every  day  two  hundred  tons  of  coal 
and  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  gallons  of 
water,  besides  sand  and  cinders,  is  operated  by 
only  two  men,  one  for  day  and  one  for  night. 

To  secure  the  working  force  for  the  operation 
of  the  road,  employment  bureaus  are  maintained 

232 


Rebuilding  of  an  American  Railroad 

which  draw  from  the  sons  of  farmers  and  shippers 
along  the  line.  It  is  a  pioneer  idea  among  rail- 
roads, but  its  wisdom  is  obvious.  Of  equal  im- 
portance, and  also  unique,  is  a  railway  instruction 
school  conducted  on  cars  fitted  for  the  purpose. 
In  this  school  every  switchman,  operator,  train- 
man, and  engineman  takes  a  course.  There  are 
classes  in  rules,  in  orders,  and  in  signals,  and,  while 
working  to  higher  positions  in  the  service,  subor- 
dinates attend  them,  final  examinations  being 
held  for  promotion.  By  means  of  the  stereop- 
ticon,  signals  are  shown  in  the  car,  and  the  pic- 
tures include  a  complete  panorama  of  trains  of 
every  class,  of  trackage  of  every  description,  and 
of  the  semaphore  and  interlocking  plants  of  the 
entire  system.  Photography,  indeed,  has  become 
so  important  an  adjunct  in  the  work  of  the  new 
kind  of  railway  management  that  an  official  pho- 
tographer is  a  part  of  the  operating  department 
of  the  new  road. 

Photography  of  this  systematised  description 
serves  admirably  to  supply  newspaper  editors 
with  timely  illustrations  and  affords  material  for 
write-ups.  As  a  means  of  adjustment  in  cases  of 
accident  and  personal  injury  the  photograph  is  of 
especial  value.  If  at  any  time  an  officer  is  too 
busy  to  go  out  in  person  to  see  any  feature  of 
a  road,  he  may  send  the  photographer  for  a  view 

233 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

of  it.  For  personal  injuries,  surgical  aids  have 
not  been  overlooked,  and  every  train  is  provided 
with  a  chest  that  includes  the  chief  medicines 
and  certain  instruments  for  use  in  accidents;  in 
addition,  each  car  has  its  first-aid  packet. 

The  entire  point  of  view  is,  in  railway  affairs, 
quite  modern;  It  is  not  that  these  ideas  are  all 
of  them  novel,  but  that  together  they  represent 
that  which  is  good  in  the  best  railroad  manage- 
ment of  to-day. 


234 


THE  FIRST   TRANSCONTINENTAL 
RAILROAD 


THE  FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL 
RAILROAD 

\y 
IN  history  we  have  the  record  of  every  day  but 

yesterday,  and  of  every  generation  but  the  last. 
Our  first  transcontinental  railroad  was  begun  only 
forty  years  ago ;  yet  as  compared  with  what  we 
know  of  its  story  our  information  concerning  the 
Boston  Tea  Party  is  precise.  Possibly  this  is  a 
tribute  to  the  moral  over  the  material;  possibly 
the  blinding  aurora  of  the  Civil  War  still  so  plays 
on  the  retina  of  our  memories  as  to  obscure  all 
lesser  events  on  that  horizon ;  at  all  events,  when 
recently  an  American  public  man  was  asked  for 
literature  concerning  the  history  of  this  railroad 
building  he  was  at  a  loss  v satisfactorily  to  refer  to 
any.  x  ' 

Even  in  looking  back  into  *h«e  story,  It  is  diffi-      } 
cult  to  realise  that  the  building" of  a  railroad  to 
the  Pacific  Coast  had  been  publicly  proposed  be-  ^v 
fore  New  England  had  a  mile  of  railroad ;  and 
that  as  far  back  as  1 840  the  Pacific  Railroad  proj-       / 
ect  had  already  become  popular  and  was  timely      I 
matter  with  newspaper  and  magazine  editors. 

237  — 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

But  by  1845  tne  subject  had  taken  so  firm  a 
hold  on  popular  fancy  that  an  ingenious  memo- 
rialist of  Congress,  Robert  Mills,  in  advocating  the 
building  of  a  transcontinental  highway  for  auto- 
mobiles— "  steam-carriages,"  he  termed  them — 
modestly  claimed  to  have  advanced  the  idea  of  a 
Pacific  Railroad  in  1819.  This  the  historians 
will  not  allow ;  *  it  is  certain,  however,  that  in 
1840  dispute  had  already  arisen  as  to  the  honour 
of  having  first  proposed  a  transcontinental  line. 

The  seeds  thus  sown  in  the  thirties  ripened  in 
the  succeeding  decade  into  an  agitation  that  be' 
came  national.  *  A  New  York  merchant  surren- 
dered so  completely  to  the  fascination  of  the 
Pacific  Road  idea  that  he  gave  his  life  and  his 
fortune  to  efforts  to  arouse  public  opinion  on  the 
subject  and  to  move  Congress  to  action.  It  was 
not  that  he  had  aim  of  personal  aggrandisement, 
for  he  proposed  to  assume  the  construction  and 
general  superintendence  of  the  road  at  a  salary 
so  nominal  as  $4,000  a  year ;  he  was  primarily 
moved  by  the  glorious  national  possibilities  of  his 
enterprise,  and  it  must  still  move  the  reader  of 
j  the  long  and  somewhat  tedious  story  of  the 
/  Pacific  Road  project  to  picture  Asa  Whitney, 
towering  in  breadth  and  strength  above  all  early 

*  The  Union  Pacific  Railway,  John  P.  Davis,  Chicago, 
1894. 

238 


The  First  Transcontinental  Road 

promoters,  his  illusions  still  unshattered,  but  the 
span  of  his  life  exhausted,  keeping  a  dairy  in  the 
city  of  Washington,  and  selling  milk  to  mitigate 
the  poverty  of  his  declining  years. 

Thomas  H.  Benton,  in  a  burst  of  public  elo- 
quence, proposed  in  1849  tnat  ^e  Faciftc  line 
when  built  be  adorned  with  a  statue  of  Columbus 
hewn  from  a  granite  peak  of  the  Rockies,  the 
mountain  itself  its  massive  pedestal,  with  an  out- 
stretched arm  pointing  India  to  the  westbound 
passenger.  Benton's  idea  was  never  carried  out, 
but  in  the  Black  Hills,  more  than  eight  thousand 
feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea,  stands  a  great  cairn 
overlooking  the  highest  point  at  which  the  first 
transcontinental  road  crosses  the  Rockies.  A 
newer  track  alignment  has  left  this  early  monu- 
ment at  some  distance  from  the  present  route, 
and  though  at  one  point  a  glimpse  of  it  may  still 
be  had  from  the  car  window,  it  is  now  some  hun- 
dreds of  feet  above  the  railroad  summit.  It  com. 
memorates  the  energy  and  perseverance  of  two 
men  to  whom  chiefly  is  due  the  credit  for  the 
building  of  the  Union  Pacific.  Some  time,  per- 
haps, beside  the  monument  to  Oakes  and  Oliver 
Ames  a  more  modest  memorial  may  rise  to  the 
memory  of  poor  Asa  Whitney,  who  surrendered 
his  life  and  fortune  to  an  idea  because  to  him  it 
was  a  national  and  a  glorious  one. 

239 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

In  truth,  there  never  has  been  in  American  in- 
dustrial achievement,  and  there  never  again  can 
be  so  widespread  and  stirring  a  public  sentiment 
as  that  which  called  for  the  building  of  a  Pacific 
Railroad.  We  can  never  again  be  poor ;  we  can 
never  again  be  only  vaguely  conscious  of  a  Sam- 
son-like national  strength  and  youthfully  im- 
patient to  test  it.  We  have  tested  our  strength 
since  then  in  too  many  ways;  possibly  we  are 
not  quite  proud  of  all  of  them.  Nor  can  we  ever 
return  to  a  public  sentiment  that  knows  no 
jealousy  of  extraordinary  riches,  and  as  to  indus- 
trial enterprises  we  have  been  surfeited;  every 
day  we  taste  of  new  ones  with  palates  more  jaded. 
It  was  otherwise  then.  The  great  plains  were 
the  home  of  the  Indian  and  the  buffalo.  Pike's 
Peak  was  a  watchword,  the  Rocky  Mountains 
a  dream,  and  California  a  fever  when  national 
thought  crystallised  into  a  demand  for  the  first 
Pacific  Road.  The  idea  took  hold  of  men  as 
powerful  as  Webster,  as  sagacious  as  Lincoln,  as 
cold  as  Jefferson  Davis,  as  dramatic  as  Sumner, 
and  as  politic  as  Buchanan.  Douglas  and  Benton 
"  in  their  day  lent  to  it  their  eloquence.  The  ten 
years  that  led  up  to  the  Civil  War  saw  the  proj- 
^  ect  discussed  by  each  succeeding  Congress  with 
/  an  earnestness  .and  attention  second  only  to  that 
(  expended  on  the  slavery  question.  Indeed,  the 

240 


The  First  Transcontinental  Road 

railroad  matter  as    soon    as   it   became    tangible 
became  political,  and  divided  men  into  alignment 
of  suspicion    and    resentment,    as   the    Missouri 
Compromise  divided  them.    But  it  forced  recom- 
mendations from  succeeding  Presidents  in  annual 
messages  for  years,  and  when  the  young  Repub- 
lican Party  found  itself  for  the  first  time  in  power 
the  Pacific  Road  project  enlisted  the  aggressive- 
ness of  men  so  resourceful  and    dominating    as 
Thaddeus    Stevens,  John    Sherman,  and  Henry 
Winter   Davis.  J  The    matter    got    before    the 
Twenty-eighth  Congress  in  1845   in  the  form  of 
Asa  Whitney's  memorial,  and  from  that  time  forth 
for  fifty  years  it  engaged  Congressional  attention 
in  some  form  during  nearly  every  session.    Davis," 
the  historian  of  the  Union  Pacific,  notes  that  ten    I 
years  before  a  Pacific  Road  bill  was  finally  passed,  / 
the    Senate    of  the  Thirty-second  Congress  was   \ 
giving  more  time  to  the  subject  than  to  any  other   j 
topic  of  legislation.     In  1853  tne  Pr°ject  got  into/ 
its  first  Presidential  message;  the  Thirty-second 
Congress  gave  it  its  first  special  committee,  and 
national    appropriations  already  made    put  into 
the  field  corps  of  engineers  whose  survey  reports 
filled  eleven  large  volumes. 

During  all  these  years  of  the  early  agitation  and     ) 
up  to  1861  there  was  no  real  cjiance  for  a  Pacific  A 
Railway  bill  to  pass  Congress.  '  All  parties  agreed  J 

241 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

/  that  such  a  road  should  be  built,  but  where? 
The  South  wanted  a  southern  route,  and  the 
North  a  northern  route,  and  these  greater  interests 

I    were  in  turn  split  into  minor  interests.     There 

/     were   at  different  periods  a  New  York-Chicago 

interest  indorsed  by  Seward,  a  St.  Louis  interest 

championed    by    Benton,    a    Memphis    interest 

backed  by  Arkansas  and  Tennessee,  a  Charleston 

interest  urged  by  Gadsden,  and  a  nominal  Texas 

interest  upheld  by  Sam  Houston.     The  struggle 

over  the  eastern  terminus  or  termini  of  the  road 

/{ — for  compromise  measures  at  times  proposed  no 

/  fewer  than  three  lines  with  six  termini — might 
have  gone  on  another  twenty  years  had  not  the 

J  guns  at  Sumter  relieved  the  situation  of  its  most 

(  serious  complications,  v 

^  The  Republican  Party  had,  in  its  first  national 
platform,  committed  itself  to  Pacific  Railway 
legislation,  and  the  Democratic  platforms  of  1856 
and  1860  echoed  pledges  of  friendliness  to  the 
project.  But  when  Congress  assembled  in  July, 
1861,  there  were  many  vacant  seats.  The  small 
but  alert  Southern  element  that  had  opposed  Pa- 
cific legislation  in  every  form  was  absent,  as  well 
as  those  larger  Southern  interests  that  had  fought 
^  for  a  Pacific  Road  south  of  the  thirty-fifth  parallel. 
The  shock  and  stress  of  the  Civil  War  had  incalcu- 
lably strengthened  the  chances  for  Federal  action, 

242 


The  First  Transcontinental  Road 

and  the  discussion  in  the  war  Congress  lost  at  once 
its  wordy  aspect  of  earlier  years.  That  form  of 
legislative  inactivity  known  as  side-stepping  was 
plainly  at  an  end.  There  were  left  but  two  strong 
Pacific  Railway  interests,  and  of  these  the  more 
powerful  was  backed  by  New  York,  New  Eng- 
land, and  Chicago  interests,  which  stood  for  a  line 
on  the  forty-first  parallel.  Seward,  indeed,  had 
said  in  debate  ten  years  before,  "Make  a  route 
across  the  continent  wherever  you  please,  there 
will  be  but  two  terminals  to  that  road,  one  at  New 
York,  the  other  at  San  Francisco."  Moreover, 
Chicago  was  already  pushing  west  with  its  roads 
to  the  Missouri  River,  and  William  B.  Ogden, 
the  founder  of  the  Chicago  and  Northwestern 
System,  stood  with  the  New  York  interests  against 
a  Northern  Pacific  route.  He  was  already  build- 
ing the"  Northwestern  westward  from  Chicago, 
and  when  the  Pacific  Railroad  bill  of  1862  passed 
Congress,  the  contest  between  Chicago  and  St. 
Louis  as  to  which  should  secure  the  main  line 
had  been  won  by  the  former  in  the  provision  that 
the  initial  eastern  point  of  the  new  line  should  be 
at  a  point  on  the  looth  meridian,  "  between  the 
south  margin  of  the  valley  of  the  Republican 
River  and  the  north  margin  of  the  valley  of  the 
Platte  River,  in  the  Territory  of  Nebraska";  and 
the  final  bill  of  1864  confirmed  this  location. 

243 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

f  The  principal  eastern  terminus  was  given  to 
(  Omaha,  in  a  provision  that,  of  several  branches 
I  provided  for  east  of  this  point,  the  Iowa  branch 
/  should  be  built  to  the  initial  point  on  the  looth 
meridian,  from  "  a  point  on  the  western  boundary 
of  the  State  of  Iowa  to  be  fixed  by  the  President  of 
the  United  States";  and  Abraham  Lincoln  fixed 
the  point  within  the  limits  of  the  township  in 
Iowa  opposite  the  town  of  Omaha,  in  Nebraska, 
and  afterward,  "  east  of,  and  opposite  to,  the  East 
Line  of  Section  Ten."  In  the  end  the  legal  ter- 
minus was  fixed  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  on  the  Iowa  side  of  the  Missouri 
River,  where,  west  of  Council  Bluffs,  the  traveller 
finds  to-day  what  is  known  as  the  Transfer  Sta- 
tion, though  this  is,  in  matter  of  fact,  some  dis- 
tance south  of  Section  Ten. 

General  Grenville  M.  Dodge,  who  was  chief 
engineer  of  the  Union  Pacific,  and  in  charge  of 
construction  during  1866  and  thereafter,  still  sur- 
vives, a  Nestor  in  the  honourable  company  of 
American  construction  engineers,  and  his  name 
will  always  be  coupled  with  the  work  of  putting 
the  first  railroad  across  the  Rockies.  His  remi- 
niscences throw  a  pretty  side-light  on  this  decision 
of  Lincoln's  concerning  the  eastern  terminus.  In 
I  1858  General  Dodge — assigning  the  date  from 
recollection — after  a  summer  of  engineering  recon- 

244 


The  First  Transcontinental  Road 

noissances  west  of  the  Missouri,  camped  with  his 
party  at  Council  Bluffs.  Abraham  Lincoln  at 
that  time  was  visiting  the  Bluffs.  He  heard  of 
General  Dodge's  return  and  of  his  surveys,  and 
sought  him  out.  Sitting  with  the  mountain  en- 
gineer on  the  porch  of  the  hotel,  Lincoln  held 
him  for  two  hours  or  more,  and  drew  from  him 
the  facts  he  had  obtained  and  his  opinion  as  to 
the  best  route  for  a  railroad  across  the  continent 
and  the  possibility  of  building  one. 

In  1862,  while  in  command  of  the  District 
of  Corinth,  Miss.,  General  Dodge  was  ordered 
by  Grant  to  proceed  to  Washington  to  report  to 
the  President ;  Lincoln  had  remembered  the  talk 
of  1858  on  the  hotel  porch  of  Council  Bluffs. 
The  question  of  the  eastern  terminus  for  the 
newly  authorised  railroad  was  then  a  national 
question.  In  General  Dodge's  opinion  there  was, 
from  an  engineering  viewpoint,  but  one  natural 
route  for  a  railroad  to  cross  Iowa,  the  Missouri 
River,  and  the  great  plains.  The  route  proposed 
by  him  was  that  along  which  the  Union  Pacific 
was  afterward  built.  It  offered  the  advantage  of 
a  great  open  road  from  Omaha  to  Salt  Lake,  600 
miles  of  it  up  a  single  valley — that  of  the  Platte. 
This,  in  turn,  led  to  the  natural  pass  over  the 
Rockies,  the  lowest  in  all  the  range,  and  to  the 
continental  divide  at  a  point  where  it  lay  in  a 

245 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

basin  500  feet  below  the  general  level  instead  of 
on  a  mountain  summit.  Any  engineer,  in  General 
Dodge's  opinion,  who  should  fail  to  avail  himself 
of  rich  possibilities  should  have  his  diploma  taken 
from  him.  Lincoln  acted  on  these  views  in  desig- 
nating Omaha  as  the  Missouri  River  terminus. 

In  its  political  aspect  the  extending  of  Govern- 
ment aid  in  the  building  of  the  first  transconti- 
nental railroad  must  always  remain  an  extraordi- 
nary enactment  in  our  national  legislation.      The 
Civil  War  alone  made  such  a  step  possible.     The 
period  had   rudely  brushed  away  constitutional 
and  laissez  faire  legislators  and  reasoning,  and  the 
men  who  stood  in  Congress  for  action  went  in  this 
case  to  the  other  extreme.     The  building  of  a 
^Pacific  Road  had  every  war  argument  in  its  favour. 
Such  a  line,  it  was  urged,  would  bind  California 
/     more  closely  to  the  Northern  interest,  and  would 
V     enable  the  United  States  more  promptly  to  repel 
I    any  attack  on  the  coast  ports.    Moreover,  it  would 
/     enable  the  Government  more  easily  to  control 
\      Indian  outbreaks  among  those  tribes  still  unrea- 
\   sonable  enough  to  object  to  being  exterminated.  ? 
It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  during 
the  gloomy  days  of  the  Civil  War  Indian  out- 
breaks, whether  justifiable  or  not,  were   serious 
matters  to  a  Government  struggling  to  maintain 
itself;  and  an  argument  seeming  trivial  now  might 

246 


The  First  Transcontinental  Road 

have  been  serious  when  people  were  excited  or 
depressed  by  every  rumour  and  portent.  As  a  final 
argument  it  was  urged  that  the  building  of  the 
Pacific  Road  would  put  an  end  to  the  Mormon 
question,  and  the  completion  of  it  was  the  real 
beginning  of  the  end. 

The  very  name  used  by  Congress  in  creating 
the  corporation,  "  The  Union  Pacific  Railroad 
Company,"  implies  a  reflection  of  the  Union  sen- 
timent of  the  Civil  War  period. Y  The  use  of  the 
word  has  been  ascribed  to  the  "  union  "  of  various 
corporations  and  plans  in  the  project.  But  there 
is  undoubtedly  more  than  this  to  it.  By  far  the  j 
most  powerful  arguments  in  favour  of  the  road^L 
were  the  war  needs  of  the  Government.  The  j 
word  "  Union "  was  everywhere  foremost  in  the 
thought  and  speech  of  that  day,  and  Federal  action 
was  meant  to  come  as  a  final  answer  to  the  de- 
mand of  nearly  twenty  years  for  national  legisla- 
tion on  the  Pacific  Road  subject ;  to  the  foes  of  the 
Union  it  was  flung  as  an  evidence  of  confidence 
and  strength  on  the  part  of  the  Republican  Party 
and  its  Union  administration.  But  of  the  burdens 
carried  during  those  days  by  Abraham  Lincoln 
there  is  no  more  pathetic  glimpse  than  this,  that 
in  the  midst  of  the  profound  anxieties  of  his 
struggle  to  preserve  the  nation  he  was  required 
by  Congress  to  determine  the  detail  of  the  proper 

247 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

track-gauge  for  the  Pacific  Railroad.  Nor  wiK 
it  surprise  any  one  conversant  with  the  legislative 
spirit  of  the  war  period  that,  after  President  Lin- 
coln had  long  and  painstakingly  considered  the 
subject  and  decided  on  a  track-gauge  of  five  feet, 
Congress  cheerfully  and  at  once  passed  a  law 
changing  the  gauge  to  four  feet  eight  and  one- 
half  inches. 

The  act  of  1862  was  supplemented  by  a  sec- 
ond act  in  1864  containing  more  liberal  subsidy 
provisions,  and  under  this  charter  the  Union  and 
Central  Pacific  Railroads  were  built.  The  coterie 
of  capitalists  who  undertook  the  enterprise  be- 
lieved that  their  major  profits  would  come  from 
the  construction  rather  than  from  the  railroad  as 
an  investment,  and  in  order  to  insure  these  to 
themselves  they  acquired  the  charter  of  the 
Pennsylvania  Fiscal  Agency,  a  name  afterward 
changed  by  the  Legislature  of  Pennsylvania  at 
the  instance  of  George  Francis  Train  to  "  The 
Credit  Mobilier  of  America,"  and  the  Credit 
Mobilier  not  only  constructed  the  Union  Pacific 
but  made  for  itself  and  for  a  number  of  American 
statesmen  the  most  sensational  record  of  a  long 
\  and  exciting  day  of  plots  and  counter-plots  in 
Pacific  Railroad  history.  For  the  beginning  of 
construction  much  work  had  already  been  done. 
General  Dodge  had  crossed  the  Missouri  River  as 

248! 


The  First  Transcontinental  Road 

early  as  1853  m  t^ie  interest  of  projected  Iowa 
railroads  which  sought  to  ascertain  where  a  Pacific 
Road  would  be  likely  to  fix  a  Missouri  River 
terminus.  Until  the  Civil  War  General  Dodge 
was  busy  with  reconnoissances  and  surveys. 
When  he  entered  the  service,  Peter  A.  Dey 
took  it  up,  and  in  1862  put  regular  parties  in 
the  field  on  the  first  range  of  the  Rockies, 
and  over  the  Wasatch  range  under  a  son  of 
Brigham  Young.  These  surveys  extended  from 
the  Missouri  River  to  the  California  State  line 
and  included  twenty-five  thousand  miles  of  re- 
connoissances and  over  fifteen  thousand  miles 
of  instrumental  surveys.  They  were  made  al- 
most entirely  under  army  protection,  but  despite 
all  precautions  many  men  were  scalped  by  In- 
dians. Ground  for  construction  was  broken  at 
Omaha  with  a  florid  speech  by  George  Francis 
Train,  December  2,  1863,  and  actual  construction 
Began  on  the  Union  Pacific  very  early  in  1864. 
Leland  Stanford,  on  January  8,  1863,  had  turned 
the  first  shovelful  of  earth  for  the  California  end  of 
the  undertaking  at  Sacramento.  In  nine  months 
the  Omaha  enthusiasts  had  completed  the  first 
eleven  miles  of  one  end  of  the  transcontinental 
line.  The  Californians  had  come  to  a  standstill 
with  thirty-one  miles.  Thus  the  race  started 
slowly ;  but  at  its  close  there  were  days  when  Jack 

249 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

Casement   laid   six   and   seven   miles  of  Union 
Pacific  track  between  sun  and  sun. 

The  route  the  new  road  followed  from  the 
Missouri  River  had  long  been  famous  on  the 
frontier.  Spaniards  had  probably  reached  what  is 
now  Nebraska  as  early  as  1541,  but  it  was  more 
than  a  hundred  years  later  when  Indians  on  the 
Mississippi  described  to  Father  Marquette  the 
course  of  the  Missouri,  and  his  map  showing  the 
Platte  flowing  into  the  Missouri  is  still  preserved. 
White  men  in  1 739  had  explored  the  Platte  as  far 
as  the  present  village  of  North  Platte  in  Nebras- 
ka, and  French  traders  made  a  highway  of  the  river 
for  more  than  a  hundred  years  afterward.  The 
expeditions  of  Lewis  and  Clarke,  close  upon  the 
Louisiana  purchase,  opened  the  country  to  Amer- 
ican influence,  and  St.  Louis  became  the  great 
outfitting  point  for  the  adventurers  and  traders 
who  penetrated  to  the  remote  regions  of  the 
Northwest.  In  1812  young  Robert  Stuart,  bound 
overland  from  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  River 
with  despatches  for  John  Jacob  Astor,  found  him- 
self unhorsed  among  mountain  wastes  in  what  is 
now  Wyoming.  The  little  party,  groping,  half- 
famished,  toward  the  head  waters  of  the  Missouri, 
stumbled  on  the  north  fork  of  the  Platte  River, 
followed  it  through  the  Black  Hills,  wintered  un- 
der its  cottonwoods  on  the  Nebraska  bottoms,  and 

250 


The  First  Transcontinental  Road 

in  the  spring  brought  to  St.  Louis  the  first  definite 
story  of  a  trip  down  the  line  of  the  future  Pacific 
Railroad.  In  1825  trappers  of  the  American  Fur 
Company  had  made  headquarters  as  far  west  as 
the  Beaver  Valley  in  Wyoming  and  Jim  Bridger 
had  already  tasted  of  the  waters  of  the  Great  Salt 
Lake.  In  1 820  Jacques  Laramie,  murdered  on  the 
bank  of  a  Wyoming  tributary  of  the  Platte,  had  left 
his  name  not  alone  to  that  river  but  to  the  plains, 
the  mountains,  the  peak,  the  county,  the  city,  and 
the  fort  that  still  bear  it.  Trappers  headed  by  Mil- 
ton Sublette  and  Bridger  bought  Fort  Laramie  in 
1835,  and  it  became  the  rendezvous  of  a  genera- 
tion of  men  that  has  passed  and  whose  like  we 
can  never  see  again.  Fremont  was  there  in  1842, 
and  Parkman,  following  the  Platte  trail  in  1846, 
has  left  the  story  of  his  trip  up  the  valley  that 
General  Dodge  was  to  follow  with  his  surveyors 
for  the  overland  route. 

In  1832  Captain  Bonne ville  camped  under 
Chimney  Rock  and,  penetrating  Wyoming,  skirted 
the  Wind  River  Mountains  and  fished  trout  from 
a  tributary  of  the  Green  River.  He  was  the  first 
white  man  to  take  a  wagon  across  the  continental 
divide  on  the  line  of  the  future  railroad.  Here 
the  Mormon  pioneers  began  their  long  journey  to 
their  unknown  home  beyond  the  mountains,  for 
Fremont's  narrative  had  decided  Brigham  Young 

251 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

upon  his  great  undertaking.  Along  the  Platte 
year  after  year  were  strung  the  wagons  of  the 
Forty-niners,  and  in  a  calm  made  sweet  by  the 
blossom  of  the  wild  plum  and  a  sunset  brought 
near  by  the  thin,  clear  air  of  the  mountains  rose  the 
camp-fires  of  the  patient  homeseekers  following 
the  overland  trail. 

But  the  valley  scenes  changed  when  the  rail- 
road contracts  were  let.  The  grading  camp  made 
a  rough  companion  to  the  quiet  outfit  of  the  immi- 
grant. Civilisation,  now  really  coming,  advanced 
in  its  mask  of  vice,  the  characteristic  of  its  rise 
and  its  decline.  The  grader,  the  gambler,  the 
criminal,  and  the  adventurer  moved  together  across 
the  plains  with  the  tough  town,  the  outlaw,  and 
the  vigilance  committee.  The  forks  of  the  Platte 
were  reached  by  the  tracklayers  at  the  close  of  the 
second  season's  building,  1866.  But  before  these 
first  246  miles  were  completed  some  conception 
of  the  enormous  difficulties  of  the  undertaking 
had  dawned  on  the  promoters. 

The  Union  Pacific  was  building  across  a  desert 
with  a  base  at  Omaha  that  was  likewise  beyond  a 
railroad  connection.  The  engine  for  the  Omaha 
railroad  shops  was  dragged  across  country  from 
Des  Moines.  The  Central  Pacific,  building  from 
the  western  coast,  was  compelled  to  get  everything 
except  ties  by  ship,  around  the  Horn  or  by  way 

252 


The  First  Transcontinental  Road 

of  Panama.  Marine  insurance  was  on  a  war  basis, 
and  the  capital  of  the  Californians  was  eaten  into 
by  indemnity  tolls.  The  Union  Pacific  lacked 
even  the  tie  supply  afforded  the  Californians  by 
the  Sierra  Nevadas,  and  was  compelled  to  skirmish 
hundreds  of  miles  up  and  down  the  Missouri  River 
for  ties  and  bridge  timbers.  Moreover,  the  In- 
dians of  the  plains  had  already  filed  their  protests 
against  the  novel  invasion.  Before  the  rails  had 
been  laid  two  hundred  miles  from  the  Missouri 
River,  Turkey  Leg  and  his  Cheyennes  swooped 
down  on  Plum  Creek,  scalped  a  hand-car  pilot, 
derailed  the  freight  train  following,  and  with  the 
engineman  and  fireman  burning  in  the  wreckage 
plundered  the  box-cars  and  made  away  heavy 
with  booty. 

It  happened  that  General  Dodge  in  his  car,  a 
travelling  arsenal,  was  on  his  way  down  from  the 
"front"  when  news  of  the  capture  reached  Plum 
Creek  Station.  On  his  train  were  twenty-odd  men, 
in  part  the  crews,  some  discharged  men  and  some 
adventurers  bound  for  the  rear — all  of  them  stran- 
gers to  the  chief  engineer.  The  reports  coming 
in  by  telegraph  brought  every  one  to  the  little 
station  platform.  General  Dodge  called  on  the 
men  about  him  to  fall  in  and  go  forward  to  recap- 
ture the  freight  train.  Every  man  within  hearing 
went  into  line  and  by  his  bearing  showed  he  was  a 

253 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

soldier ;  and  when,  reaching  the  scene,  the  chief 
gave  the  order  to  deploy  as  skirmishers  these 
frontiersmen  advanced  as  steadily  and  in  as  good 
order  as  the  veterans  that  climbed  the  face  of 
Kenesaw. 

X^In  truth  every  contractor's  camp  had  a  military 
(  front.     Engineering  parties  were  always  guarded 
/   by  detachments  of  United  States  troops,  and  a 
\  little  station  in  Wyoming  still  bears  the  name 
of  Percy,  for  Engineer  Percy  T.  Brown,  killed 
by  Indians.     "Engineers  reconnoitred,  surveyed, 
ocated,    and    built   inside    picket    lines.      Men 
marched  to  work  at  the  tap  of  the  drum,"  says 
General  Dodge.     "They  stacked  their  arms  on 
the  dump  and  were  ready  at  a  moment's  warning 
to  fall  in  and  fight  for  their  territory.     General 
Casement's  track-train  could  arm  a  thousand  men 
at  a  word,  and  from  him,  as  its  head,  down  to  its 
chief  spiker  such  a  battalion  could  be  commanded 
by  experienced  officers  of  every  rank  from  general 
\J:o  captain." 

Amid  these  difficulties  construction  proceeded 
with  such  materials  as  could  be  brought  up  from 
St.  Louis  and  St.  Joseph  during  three  months  of 
water  transportation;  but  on  November  7,  1867, 
the  last  railroad  link  in  the  transcontinental  line 
east  of  the  Missouri  was  completed.  William  B. 
Ogden  had  pushed  the  Chicago  and  Northwest- 

254 


The  First  Transcontinental   Road 

ern  Railway  into  Council  Bluffs,  and  that  road, 
then,  as  now,  a  powerful  ally  of  the  Union  Pacific, 
began  pouring  track  material  into  the  Council 
Bluffs  yards,  giving  the  latter  road  an  actual  railroad 
base  for  its  supplies. 

It  was  needed.  The  Central  Pacific  party, 
taking  advantage  of  the  law  of  1866,  which 
opened  the  continent  to  a  race  between  the  east 
and  west  builders,  were  bending  every  effort  to  get 
to  Salt  Lake  ahead  of  their  eastern  competitor. 
Each  of  the  two  parties  at  interest  was  determined 
to  secure  to  itself  the  greatest  possible  mileage 
because  every  mile  built  meant  round  profits  in 
lands  and  in  bonds.  The  two  companies  instead 
of  being  co-partners  became  bitter  rivals,  and  up 
to  the  last  moment  in  which  a  junction  of  the  two 
roads  was  effected  made  every  possible  effort  to 
overreach  one  another.  During  1867  General 
Dodge  had  already  pushed  the  Union  Pacific  to 
Cheyenne  in  Wyoming,  which  after  November 
14th  became  the  winter  terminus. 

The  whole  country  now  awoke  to  the  contest 
that  the  Union  Pacific  and  the  Central  Pacific 
were  entering  upon.  Which  should  reach  Salt 
Lake  first,  and  which  should  win  the  big  Govern- 
ment subsidies  ranging  through  the  mountains 
from  $64,000  to  $96,000  a  mile1? 

The  Union  Pacific  chief  engineer  after  a  New 

255 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

York  conference  during  the  winter  of  1867-68  re- 
turned to  Omaha,  called  his  staff  around  him,  and 
laid  out  his  plans.  These  centred  upon  Ogden, 
Utah,  502  miles  west  of  the  end  of  the  track, 
as  the  objective  point  for  1868,  and  Humboldt 
Wells,  216  miles  west  of  Ogden,  for  the  spring 
of  1869.  Preliminary  lines  had  been  run  but  no 
final  location  had  been  made  west  of  Laramie 
City,  where  town  lots  were  sold  in  April,  1868. 
General  Dodge  had  already  solved  the  vital  prob- 
lem of  the  pass  across  the  Rockies  by  getting  lost 
one  afternoon  in  the  Black  Hills,  if  it  is  fair  so  to 
describe  the  accident  which  led  to  the  remarka- 
ble discovery.  For  over  two  years  all  explora- 
tions had  failed  to  reveal  a  satisfactory  crossing 
of  this  secondary  range  of  the  Rockies,  known  as 
the  Black  Hills,  which  on  account  of  its  short 
slope  and  its  great  height  is  the  most  difficult 
of  all  the  ranges  to  get  over.  On  this  occasion 
General  Dodge,  returning  from  a  Powder  River 
campaign,  leaving  his  troops,  with  a  scout  and  a  few 
men,  rode  up  Lodge  Pole  Creek,  along  the  over- 
land trail,  and  struck  south  along  the  crest  of  the 
mountains.  Indians  beset  the  little  party  before 
noon  and  got  between  them  and  their  trains. 
Holding  the  Indians  at  bay  with  their  rifles,  they 
retreated.  It  was  nearly  night  when  they  finally 
escaped  the  enemy,  and  meantime  they  had  ridden 

256 


The  First  Transcontinental  Road 

down  an  unknown  ridge  that  led  out  of  the 
hills  and  clear  to  the  plains  without  a  break. 
That  night  General  Dodge  told  his  guide  that 
if  they  saved  their  scalps  he  believed  they 
had  found  the  crossing  of  the  Black  Hills ;  over 
this  pass  the  trains  of  the  Union  Pacific  run 
to-day. 

This  engineering  work  of  running  the  lines 
through  the  Black  Hills,  then,  had,  in  1867,  al- 
ready been  done ;  but  beyond  that  point  absolutely 
everything  was  yet  to  be  done.  Engineering 
parties  were  distributed  during  the  winter  months, 
to  be  on  the  ground  when  spring  opened,  and 
those  destined  for  Utah  crossed  the  Wasatch 
Mountains  on  sledges  with  the  snow  over  the  tops 
of  the  telegraph  poles.  The  track  was  laid  across 
the  Black  Hills,  and  this  gave  the  opportunity 
to  run  ties  down  the  mountain  streams  instead 
of  bringing  them  800  miles  from  the  Missouri 
River.  Even  after  the  builders  had  reached 
the  Hills  the  country  afforded  nothing  but  the 
roadbed  and  ties,  and  it  took  forty  carloads  of 
material  a  day  to  supply  "the  front."  In  April, 
graders  were  at  Laramie,  working  from  daylight 
till  dark,  and  the  construction  crews  worked 
every  day  without  an  hour's  loss  of  time  from 
the  start  to  the  season's  finish.  Every  man,  from 
the  chief  of  construction  to  the  water  carriers, 

257 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

seemed  bitted  for  a  finish  heat,  and  that  season 
they  actually  pushed  their  grade  to  Green  River, 
to  Ogden,  to  Salt  Lake,  and  to  far  Humboldt 
Wells. 

^Winter  caught  the  builders  at  the  foot  of  the 
Wasatch  range,  but  it  no  longer  stayed  them. 
The  spirit  of  the  fight  had  got  beyond  that,  and 
the  frozen  earth  was  dynamited  like  rock.  Track 
was  laid  across  the  Wasatch  on  a  bed  covered 
with  snow  and  ice,  and  one  of  General  Casement's 
track-laying  trains  slid,  track  and  all,  off  the  ice 
bodily  into  the  ditch !  Even  the  Mormons 
roused  themselves,  and  under  Brigham  Young's 
exhortation  turned  mightily  into  the  race.  In 
railroading  then,  as  in  politics  later,  the  watch- 
word was  "Claim  everything,"  and  the  Central 
Pacific  people  astonished  the  eastern  builders  by 
filing  a  map  and  plans  for  building  as  far  east  as 
,  Echo,  some  distance  east  of  Ogden. 

The  two  companies  had  20,000  men  at  work. 
The  Casement  brothers  of  the  Union  Pacific  con- 
struction forces  rose  to  the  occasion.  Eastern  news- 
papers were  carrying  daily  headlines,  "The 

Union  Pacific  built miles  to-day."     In  the 

beginning  a  mile  a  day  was  considered  good 
work,  but  the  Casements  had  long  been  laying  two 
miles  a  day,  and  now  were  working  seven  days  in 
the  week,  and  every  hour  the  light  gave  them,  and 

258 


The  First  Transcontinental  Road 

they  crowned  their  supreme  efforts  by  laying  in. 
one  day  nearly  eight  miles  of  track  between  day- 
light and  dark. 

The  Central  Pacific  meantime  stayed  not  for 
stake  and  stopped  not  for  stone.  They  had  four- 
teen tunnels  to  build,  but  they  did  not  wait  to 
finish  them.  Supplies,  even  to  engines,  were 
hauled  over  the  Sierras,  and  the  work  was  pushed 
until,  in  the  spring  of  1869  the  opposing  track- 
layers finally  met  at  Promontory,  Utah;  the  mo- 
ment at  which  the  law  had  declared  a  junction 
must  be  made  had  arrived. 

On  May  loth  Leland  Stanford,  Governor  of 
California  and  president  of  the  Central  Pacific, 
and  Durant,  Duff,  and  Sidney  Dillon,  of  the 
Union  Pacific,  assembled  with  their  friends  to 
drive  the  spike  that  was  to  signalise  the  comple- 
tion of  the  great  undertaking.  A  little  company 
of  regular  soldiers  with  a  garrison  band  from  Fort 
Douglas  preserved  the  military  atmosphere  of  the 
long  struggle.  The  Mormons  who  had  helped  so 
faithfully  with  the  roadbed  were  there,  and  the 
coolies  from  San  Francisco  and  the  Irish  track- 
layers from  the  Atlantic  seaboard  faced  each 
other.  Strawbridge  and  Reed,  the  rival  superin- 
tendents of  construction,  placed  under  the  rails 
the  last  tie  of  California  laurel.  Spikes  of  silver 
and  of  gold  from  Montana,  Idaho,  and  Nevada 

259 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

were  presented  and  driven  into  it,  and  Dr.  Hark- 
ness,  on  behalf  of  the  greatest  Pacific  State, 
presented  the  last  spike  wrought  of  California 
gold. 

It  is  all  very  pretty  to  read  the  florid  accounts 
of  this  final  scene.  The  country  was  waiting  for 
the  coming  moment.  Telegraph  wires  every- 
where had  been  silenced  to  repeat  the  final 
blows  of  this  silver  maul  which  were  to  ring 
from  the  little  valley  in  the  Sierras  to  end 
and  end  of  the  United  States.  The  first  engine 
from  the  Pacific  faced  the  first  from  the  At- 
lantic, and  amid  the  silence  of  uncovered  heads 
the  Governor  of  California  and  Vice-President 
Durant,  of  the  Union  Pacific,  drove  the  last 
spike. 

No  such  story  is  written  anywhere  on  the  rec- 
ords of  our  railroads.  The  days  when  Dodge 
ran  the  line,  Jack  Casement  laid  the  rail,  Leland 
Stanford  drove  the  spike,  and  Bret  Harte  supplied 
the  poem  can  never  come  back.  Literature  and 
the  railroad  had  not  become  wholly  divorced 
when  the  California  poet  wrote  "  What  the  En- 
gines Said."  \J  Public  sympathy  and  the  railroad 
had  not  yet  completely  parted  company  when  from 
the  stages  of  theatres  and  on  the  first  pages  of 
newspapers  particular  announcement  was  made 
of  the  celebration  to  come  on  the  next  day.  The 

260 


The  First  Transcontinental  Road 

rejoicing  in  San  Francisco  reached  the  extrava- 
gance of  a  kermess.  In  the  bay  the  shipping 
was  bright  with  bunting,  and  between  gaily  deco- 
rated buildings  processions  of  jubilant  citizens 
marched  all  day.  What  matters  it  that  we  know 
now  that  the  electric  current  suffered  stage  fright, 
and  that  the  ring  of  the  sledge  on  the  last  spike 
could  not  be  made  to  repeat  beyond  Omaha*? 
Is  it  not  enough  that  the  chief  operator  was 
equal  to  the  occasion  and  drove  the  heavy  blows 
in  dignified  clicks  at  the  telegraph  office  on  the 
Missouri  River?  What  is  of  consequence  is 
the  way  in  which  the  clicks  were  received,  the 
blows  repeated  at  San  Francisco  on  the  great 
bell  of  the  City  Hall,  and  cannon  booming  with 
the  last  stroke  off  Fort  Point,  and  on  Capitol 
Hill  in  Omaha  a  hundred  guns  following  the 
explosion  of  bombs  and  the  screaming  of  steam- 
whistles. 

It  was  the  rejoicing  of  our  crude  days.  Capi- 
talists, prominent  citizens,  volunteer  firemen,  and 
horseshoers  could  still  walk  happily  in  one  tire- 
less procession  when  the  last  Pacific  Railroad 
spike  was  driven.  Grant  took  the  news  in  the 
White  House,  Chicago  turned  out  a  parade  four 
miles  long,  New  York  City  was  saluting  the 
Pacific  Coast  with  salvoes  of  artillery,  Trinity 
chimes  were  ringing  "  Old  Hundred,"  and  Trinity 

261 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

voices  were  chanting  "  Te  Deum "  when  the 
earliest  transcontinental  line  was  finished  ;  and  in 
Philadelphia  the  old  bells  were  ringing  in  Inde- 
pendence Hall.  For  American  railroading  surely 
those  were  the  golden  days. 


262 


THE  EARLY  DAY   IN   RAILROADING 


THE  EARLY   DAY   IN    RAILROADING 

NOTHING  in  early  American  railroading  is  really 
so  impressive  as  the  feats  that  railroad  men  have  ac- 
complished with  the  scanty  means  they  had  to  do 
with.  To  recall  now  that  an  early  Kentucky  road 
used  rails  made  of  grooved  stone  and  faced  with 
a  strap  of  iron  seems  like  looking  back  600  years 
instead  of  sixty.  Early-day  railroad  stories,  too, 
often  have  a  humourous  turn  because  the  contrasts 
are  so  striking.  It  is  difficult  to  picture  an  infancy 
of  railroad  affairs  in  which  railroad  directors  elect- 
ed train  conductors;  yet  an  early  board  of  Michi- 
gan Southern  directors  passed  resolutions  on  such 
matters,  balloted  for  captains  of  trains,  and  took 
the  radical  step  of  declaring  that  no  credit  be 
given  for  railroad  passage. 

Railroad  travel  in  America  goes  back  even 
of  conductors.  Under  the  earliest  plan  the  train 
engineer  collected  the  fares  and  the  fireman  handled 
the  baggage  and  freight.  Nor  was  there  in  the 
beginning  that  urbanity  between  rival  railroad 
managements  which  is  now  universal.  Railroad 
accidents,  for  example,  are  so  delicate  a  matter 

265 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

that  to  refer  in  an  advertisement  to  the  mishaps  of 
another  line  would  to-day  be  thought  monstrous ; 
but  in  1837  a  Michigan  superintendent  announced 
that  "Great  care  is  taken  in  keeping  this  road 
in  repair,  thus  avoiding  accidents  similar  to  those 
occurring  on  other  roads,  daily  jeopardising  life  and 
limb."  When  such  a  handbill  made  its  appear- 
ance, can  the  rage  in  a  rival  superintendent's  office 
be  imagined  ?  Or  can  a  railroad  executive  of  to- 
day conceive  the  gnawing  pains  under  an  early-day 
president's  belt  when  having  but  two  locomotives 
in  the  world,  he  found  himself  forced  to  sell  one  to 
a  hated  competitor  in  order  to  pay  his  taxes? 
Worse  than  that,  because  infringing  on  a  dig- 
nity that  should  be  the  highest — that  of  a  direc- 
torate— there  was  a  time  in  American  railroading 
when,  the  sheriff  having  levied  on  all  the  furniture, 
the  directors  of  the  Michigan  Southern  Railroad, 
meeting  in  their  New  York  rooms,  had  to  borrow 
chairs  from  neighbouring  offices  to  deliberate  in. 

The  fact  is  that  American  railroad  building  in 
its  beginning  afforded  an  opening  for  the  specula- 
tive mania  that  always  has  sought  outlet  in  one 
or  another  form  of  American  industrial  activity. 
When  American  railroad  building  first  began, 
every  community  wanted  its  road  in  order  to  get 
its  share  of  immediate  advancement.  In  conse- 
quence, everybody — preachers,  farmers,  lawyers, 

266 


The  Early  Day  in  Railroading 

and  doctors — built  railroads.  Nearly  all  of  the 
first  ventures  failed.  The  initial  cost  usually 
swamped  the  road  by  the  time  it  was  ready  to  run 
cars.  The  few  lines  which,  under  exceptional 
conditions,  made  money  fast  inflamed  the  country 
with  railroad  building  as  it  has  been  inflamed  at 
times  by  mining  crazes  and  oil  crazes  or  real-estate 
booms. 

In  instances  these  first  railroads  were  given  bank- 
ing powers,  and  issued  wildcat  currency,  forerunner, 
perhaps,  of  watered  stocks,  which  were  an  after- 
thought. Industrial  conditions  were  at  the  outset 
so  crude  that  railroads  which  in  1837  paid  thirty 
per  cent,  dividends  went  into  bankruptcy  in  1840. 
The  idea  of  putting  a  part  of  the  earnings  into  a 
surplus  or  reserve  fund  had  not  then  been  thought 
of.  A  few  carefully  managed  and  conservative 
lines  succeeded  from  the  start.  Most  of  these  were 
built,  as  the  Pennsylvania,  on  the  wrecks  of  earlier 
ventures,  but  a  remarkable  exception  was  a  little 
Cleveland  road,  begun  with  many  misgivings  in 
1850.  It  opened  for  business  in  November,  1852, 
and  in  July,  1853,  Pa^  *ts  nrst  semi-annual  div- 
idend of  five  per  cent  This  was  not  unusual. 
What  is  unusual  is  that  this  road  never  thereafter 
failed  to  pay  regular  dividends.  It  made  its  stock- 
holders rich,  and  a  small  block  of  its  shares,  taken 
reluctantly  by  the  city  of  Cleveland,  was  the  basis 

267 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

of  the  Cleveland  municipal  sinking  fund  that  has 
since  become  world-famous.  A  more  extraordi- 
nary municipal  railroad  experience,  however,  has 
been  that  of  Cincinnati.  Cincinnati  enjoys  a  pe- 
culiar distinction  in  that  it  has  been  the  only 
American  municipality,  possibly  the  only  one  in 
the  world,  that  has  ever  built  a  railroad — and  in 
this  instance  a  very  big  and  successful  railroad. 

In  1836  the  project  of  a  railroad  from  Cincin- 
nati to  the  South  was  agitated.  The  usual 
speeches,  illuminations,  and  conferences,  however, 
resulted  in  nothing.  The  Ohio  River  traffic  had 
made  Cincinnati.  At  one  time  this  traffic  extend- 
ed to  the  Western  frontier,  and  the  steamboat 
trade  with  St.  Louis,  Memphis,  Vicksburg,  and 
New  Orleans  was  of  first  importance.  When  the 
railroads  came  this  was  cut  off.  Three  lines  of 
railroad  from  the  Atlantic  seaboard  had  put  New 
York,  Philadelphia,  and  Boston  in  touch  with  the 
West,  and  the  old  route  through  Pittsburg  and 
down  the  Ohio  River  to  Cincinnati  had  been  al- 
most abandoned.  To  the  South  the  situation 
was  even  more  serious.  In  1859  tne  Louisville 
and  Nashville,  completed  to  Nashville,  had,  with 
its  connections,  cut  off  from  Cincinnati  every 
Southern  city.  Meantime  the  Civil  War  opened. 
General  Burnside,  during  his  East  Tennessee  cam- 
paign, had  written  President  Lincoln,  it  is  said, 

268 


The  Early   Day  in   Railroading 

urging  the  building  of  a  railroad  from  Cincinnati 
to  Knoxville  as  a  line  of  communication;  but 
Lincoln,  with  his  great  common-sense,  realised 
that  such  a  step  transcended  the  proportions  of 
Burnside's  campaign,  and,  in  answering,  diplomat- 
ically confined  himself  to  the  observation  that  it 
was  quite  proper  for  a  general  in  the  field  to  make 
any  expenditures  required  by  military  necessity. 
Accordingly,  Burnside  went  ahead  with  some  val- 
uable and  thorough  surveys — and  ended  with 
them. 

But  these  military  surveys,  though  coming  to 
nothing  for  the  campaign,  were  to  bear  good  fruit 
long  afterward.  Cincinnati  realised  that  the  ques- 
tion of  a  railroad  to  the  South  was  a  question  of  her 
very  existence  as  a  city.  The  laws  of  Ohio,  based 
on  early  and  disastrous  experiences,  forbade  the 
issuing  of  bonds  or  the  granting  of  aid  to  a  rail- 
road on  the  part  of  any  municipality,  county,  or  of 
the  State  itself.  Pennsylvania  and  Michigan  had 
already  suffered  severely  in  railroad  ventures.  At 
this  deadlock  matters  stood  when  a  young  Cin- 
cinnati lawyer,  E.  A.  Furgeson,  concluded  that 
although  the  perplexed  city  could  not  aid  a  rail- 
road she  could  build  one  herself.  He  made  public 
the  novel  proposition,  and  it  won  attention.  After 
a  protracted  struggle  the  Legislature  of  Ohio 
passed  the  enabling  bill,  and,  though  peculiarly 

269 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

drawn,  the  act  has  stood  the  test  of  thirty-five  years 
of  continual  litigation. 

Louisville  rose  in  arms  when  the  project  as- 
sumed definite  shape.  The  Legislature  of  Ken- 
tucky passed  a  bill  endeavouring  to  kill  the  road 
by  taxation,  but  Cincinnati  overcame  all  obstacles, 
the  road  was  built  to  Chattanooga  and  leased 
shortly  afterward  to  the  Cincinnati,  New  Orleans 
and  Texas  Pacific  Railway.  The  most  interesting 
feature  of  this  unique  undertaking  is  that  the  road 
was  well  built.  The  numerous  and  thorough 
surveys  made  first  by  the  military  and  afterward 
by  the  city  were  followed  by  careful  construction. 
During  the  last  decade  American  railroad  systems 
have  been  relocating  and  rebuilding  large  portions 
of  their  lines,  but  no  such  work  has  been  found 
necessary  on  this  admirably  built  road.  Its  bridge 
across  the  Kentucky  River  was  the  first  cantilever 
built  in  America,  and  was,  when  erected,  the  high- 
est span  in  the  New  World.  The  Ohio  River 
bridge,  with  a  channel  span  of  515  feet,  was  said 
when  built  to  be  the  longest  truss  span  in  exist- 
ence. Lavoinne,  the  French  engineer,  in  his  work 
on  American  railways,  describes  the  Kentucky 
River  structure  as  the  most  remarkable  viaduct 
in  America,  both  in  proportions  and  plan  of  con- 
struction. Cincinnati  put  $18,000,000  into  her 
venture,  but  she  has  never  lost  one  dollar  of  her 

270 


The  Early  Day  in  Railroading 

rentals.  Her  income  to-day  exceeds  $1,000,000 
a  year,  and  the  scale  increases  from  year  to  year. 
She  paid  7.3  per  cent,  interest  on  the  bonds  issued 
for  the  construction  of  the  road,  and  there  were 
times  when  she  had  to  turn  out  her  street  lamps 
on  moonlight  nights  to  pay  her  interest;  but  her 
reward  is  now  coming,  not  alone  in  her  traffic 
supremacy,  but  on  her  actual  investment.  The 
story  of  the  struggle  for  and  against  the  under- 
taking, extending  over  a  generation,  reads  like 
romance,  but  the  railroad  was  needed,  and  its 
building  was  good  business,  even  though  hazardous 
in  the  extreme. 

There  were,  on  the  other  hand,  many  railroads 
undertaken  where  they  never  could  be  made  to 
pay ;  but  failure  was  no  deterrent  to  the  American 
people.  They  blundered  on,  learning  all  the 
time,  and  in  an  early  moment,  when  despair  had 
overtaken  the  whole  country  as  to  its  railroad  un- 
dertakings, some  monetary  genius  suggested  the 
bond  and  mortgage  as  a  means  of  providing  money 
to  build  railroads,  and  moderh  railroad  building 
was  accomplished.  By  this  expedient  the  initial 
cost  of  construction  was  funded,  the  railroad  found 
a  chance  to  breathe  while  getting  a  traffic  foothold, 
and  in  spite  of  many  abuses  in  which  the  money 
of  investors  has  been  filched  in  these  securities,  the 
plan  has  opened,  next  to  Government  securities, 

271 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

the  greatest  investment  field  in  modern  finance. 
It  alone  has  made  possible  our  national  railway 
development  as  it  exists  to-day. 

The  tremendous  efforts  made  by  towns  and  coun- 
ties and  States  to  secure  these  early  lines  of  trans- 
portation are  quite  forgotten.  They  were  on  a  par 
with  all  pioneer  hardships,  and,  considered  now, 
'^  are  often  pathetic.  Ten  years  after  Michigan  roads 
had  begun  advertising  that  emigrants  for  Indiana, 

\       Illinois,  and  Wisconsin  Territory  could  save  two 
days  by  taking  their  route,  Illinois  women,  in 

/  order  to  encourage  railroad  building,  were  selling 
their  butter,  eggs,  chickens,  and  cheese  to  pay 
for  railroad  stock  that  they  had  subscribed  for — 
depriving  themselves  of  the  scant  luxuries  of 
pioneer  women,  and  often  using  means  they  had 
put  aside  for  the  education  of  their  children  to  get 
railroads.  Communities  bonded  themselves  to 
give  aid  to  railroads  until  they  found  their  gener- 
ous impulses  had  bankrupted  them.  Another  side 
of  the  picture  is  even  more  painful.  In  repeated 
instances  dishonest  promoters  secured  the  bonds 
thus  voted  and  never  built  the  roads  for  which  they 
had  been  given.  With  their  money  stolen,  such 
communities  refused  to  pay  their  bonds,  and  lit- 
igation over  them  filled  the  courts.  Among  many 
others,  the  city  of  Watertown,  Wisconsin,  defraud- 
ed in  this  way,  repudiated  its  railroad  bonds,  and 

272 


The  Early  Day  in  Railroading 

fought  judgments  against  the  municipality  for  a 
generation. 

To  avoid  the  United  States  Court  processes 
that  would  have  compelled  the  levying  of  taxes, 
Watertown  ran  its  local  affairs  for  years  without 
a  visible  mayor,  council,  or  any  municipal  official 
on  whom  a  court  paper  could  legally  be  served, 
and  local  humourists  still  show  the  dam  across  the 
Rock  River  under  which  the  mayor  and  council 
were  said  to  have  met  for  many  years  in  clan- 
destine sessions.  Wisconsin  farmers,  to  secure 
railroads,  gave  notes  for  their  stock  subscriptions, 
and  secured  them  by  mortgages  on  their  farms. 
Needless  to  say,  the  roads  failed,  and  the  farmers 
lost  their  farms  through  their  efforts  to  secure 
transportation  facilities.  It  is  small  wonder  that 
a  legacy  of  distrust  and  hatred  is  still  in  some 
communities  a  portion  against  all  railroads. 

In  physical  obstacles  the  river  was  the  great 
stumbling-block  of  the  early  railroad.  Terminals 
were  often  fixed  at  the  Mississippi  and  the  Mis- 
souri rivers  because  of  the  enormous  expense  in- 
volved in  crossing  such  streams.  Ferries  served 
in  these  cases  to  fill  the  industrial  gaps,  and,  in 
some  instances,  pontoon  bridges,  a  famous  one 
being  that  of  John  Lawler,  at  Prairie  du  Chien,  on 
the  Mississippi.  Here  was  a  case  in  which  cor- 
porate enterprise  waited  on  individual  initiative. 

273 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

John  Lawler  at  that  point  began  transferring 
freight  and  passengers  across  the  river  by  steam- 
boat to  connecting  railroads.  He  then  conceived 
the  idea  of  a  pontoon  bridge  that  should  carry 
trains  across  the  Mississippi  intact,  and  so  ar- 
ranged, of  course,  as  to  provide  a  draw  for  river 
traffic.  With  this  venture  he  succeeded  so  well 
that  the  railroad  companies  renewed  his  contract 
on  favourable  terms,  and  he  put  in  a  pile  bridge 
with  float  draws.  The  boat  interests  of  the  rivers 
were  then  so  much  more  powerful  than  the  rail- 
roads that  it  was  often  difficult  to  get  permission 
to  bridge  a  navigable  stream.  The  first  railroad 
bridge  to  cross  the  Mississippi  was  built  at  Rock 
Island,  Illinois,  in  1856.  William  C.  Brown, 
in  a  recent  address  before  an  association  of  Il- 
linois manufacturers,  presented  a  curious  story  of 
the  history  of  this  first  industrial  highway  across 
the  most  fertile  valley  in  the  world.  No  sooner 
was  the  bridge  completed,  at  an  enormous  ex- 
pense, and  after  the  most  herculean  pioneer  rail- 
road effort,  than  St.  Louis  steamboat  interests 
demanded  its  removal  as  a  nuisance  and  an  ob- 
struction to  navigation;  and  in  a  bill  filed  by 
James  Ward,  a  citizen  of  St.  Louis,  in  the  United 
States  District  Court  for  the  district  of  Iowa, 
he  prayed  that  it  be  so  adjudged,  and  that  it  be 
"abated  and  removed,  and  said  river  be  restored 

274 


The  Early  Day   in   Railroading 

to  its  original  capacity  for  all  purposes  of  navi- 
gation." 

On  the  third  day  of  April,  1860,  this  court  ad- 
judged that  this  first  railroad  bridge  crossing  the 
Mississippi  River  was  a  "  material  obstruction 
and  a  nuisance,"  and  ordered  the  defendant  "  to 
abate  and  remove  all  the  said  piers,  together  with 
the  superstructure  thereon,"  within  six  months. 
Judge  Love,  presiding,  stated  very  carefully  in 
his  decree  the  reasons  for  his  decision.  "If  one 
road  transport  freight  and  passengers  to  the  east 
and  west  without  the  delay  and  expense  of 
changing  at  the  river,  a  financial  necessity  will 
compel  competing  roads  to  provide  themselves 
with  the  same  facilities."  From  this,  Judge  Love, 
who  died  recently  in  Iowa,  foresaw  that  if  this 
obstruction  were  allowed  to  stand  there  would  be 
railroad  bridges  across  the  Mississippi  every  forty 
or  fifty  miles,  thus  interfering  with  river  traffic  so 
as  to  do  great  and  serious  mischief. 

But  Abraham  Lincoln,  who,  fortunately,  was 
counsel  for  the  bridge  company,  could  not  see  it 
in  that  way,  and  he  appealed  to  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States.  Lincoln,  with  that 
tremendous  grasp  of  things  as  they  are  that 
marks  the  difference  between  the  big  man  and 
ordinary  men,  conceded  that  the  bridge  was  an 
obstruction  but  held  it  to  be  not  an  unreasonable 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

one.  He  argued  that  rivers  and  railroads  were 
both  great  highways  for  the  people,  and  that  trav- 
ellers by  the  one  were  entitled  to  as  much  consid- 
eration as  travellers  by  the  other.  He  even  ven- 
tured the  prediction  that  the  time  would  come 
when  the  number  of  passengers  crossing  the  river 
by  railroad  would  equal  and  perhaps  exceed  those 
travelling  up  and  down  the  river  in  boats.  Mean- 
time, repeated  attempts  were  made  to  burn  the 
bridge,  and  two  employees  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  of  St.  Louis  were  arrested  and  tried 
for  conspiracy  to  destroy  the  bridge  by  fire.  A 
decision  at  Washington  finally  reversed  the  Cir- 
cuit Court:  the  bridge  stood;  but  even  in  the 
Supreme  Court  it  won  by  a  narrow  margin. 
Three  distinguished  justices  dissented  from  the 
majority  and  put  themselves  on  record  with  an 
opinion  that  would,  had  it  prevailed  till  now, 
make  it  unlawful  to  put  a  railroad  bridge  across 
the  Mississippi  River. 

The  obstacles  of  the  law  were  frequently  in- 
voked to  stop  the  progress  of  the  railroads  across 
rivers,  and  in  cases  where  permission  was  grudg- 
ingly given  to  build  drawbridges,  it  was  provided 
that  these  must  stand  open  at  all  times  save  when 
a  train  was  crossing.  The  structural  problems  of 
big  railroad  bridges  were  solved  when  General 
William  Sooy  Smith  built  the  first  steel  railroad 

276 


The  Early  Day  in  Railroading 

bridge  in  the  world  for  the  Chicago  and  Alton 
road  across  the  Missouri  River  at  Glasgow,  Mis- 
souri, in  1879.  To-day  these  huge  steel  bridges 
are  everywhere  across  American  inland  water- 
ways, and  good  bridges  of  ten  years  ago  are  being 
taken  down  every  day  to  be  replaced  by  structures 
heavy  enough  to  take  care  of  bigger  engines  than 
were  dreamed  of  at  that  time. 

Consolidation  of  railroad  lines  was  fought  fifty 
years  ago  quite  as  vigorously  as  it;  is  now,  and 
of  necessity  quite  as  ineffectively.  J  When  Van- 
derbilt  was  knitting  together  the  strands  of  the 
New  York  Central  system,  passengers  by  rail 
were  required  to  make  four  changes  of  cars,  trans- 
fer their  baggage  each  time,  and  buy  tickets  over 
the  four  separate  roads  that  covered  the  distance 
of  197  miles  between  Albany  and  Buffalo.  When 
it  was  proposed  to  consolidate  these  four  little  rail- 
roads a  furious  opposition  arose,  and  it  required 
three  years  of  continuous  effort  to  bring  about  the 
result.  From  Buffalo  to  Cleveland  two  changes 
of  cars  were  made  in  those  days — one  at  Dunkirk 
and  one  at  Erie — and  when  it  was  decided  to 
change  the  track-gauge  of  the  roads  meeting 
at  Erie,  so  that  passengers  might  ride  from  Buf- 
falo to  Cleveland  through  Erie  without  changing 
cars,  a  local  war  ensued  that  has  never  any- 
where in  our  community  histories  been  paral- 

277 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

leled.  The  facts  are  so  little  known  as  to  justify 
details. 

On  the  morning  01  December  7,  1853,  a  v*0" 
lent  ringing  of  the  court-house  bell  roused  the 
people  of  Erie  from  their  beds,  and  the  men  of 
the  town  hurried,  village  fashion,  to  the  point  of 
alarm.  Speech-making  was  under  way  before  a 
dozen  villagers  had  gathered.  Alert  citizens  had 
called  together  their  fellow-townsmen  to  make  a 
final  defence  of  their  local  rights  against  an  out- 
rage threatened  by  the  railroads.  It  had  for  some 
time  been  known  that  the  two  railroads  purposed 
changing  the  track-gauge  to  run  trains  through 
the  town,  and  great  indignation  had  been  felt 
among  Erie  people.  As  the  crowd  grew  the 
excitement  heightened,  and  the  streets  became 
packed  with  men  ordinarily  peaceful  but  now  in- 
flamed by  harangues  from  the  court-house  steps 
into  a  fury.  An  attempt  at  organising  the  crowd 
for  action  resulted  in  a  sort  of  disorderly  proces- 
sion, the  mayor  being  called  upon  to  head  it,  and 
the  mob  started  for  the  railroad  bridge  at  State 
Street. 

It  was  the  beginning  of  actual  hostilities  in  the 
afterward  famous  Erie  war.  Few  even  well-in- 
formed men  have  ever  heard  of  this  early-day 
railroad  fight.  If  a  question  concerning  the  oc- 
currence were  raised,  most  men  of  to-day  would 

278 


The  Early  Day  in  Railroading 

try  vaguely  to  connect  the  phrase  with  shadowy 
recollections  of  the  Gould-Fisk  struggle  to  con- 
trol the  Erie  Railroad.  But  the  Erie  war,  so- 
called,  has  no  connection  with  the  railroad  known 
as  the  Erie :  it  takes  title  from  the  pretty  Penn- 
sylvania town  where  it  occurred  half  a  century 
ago.  At  that  time  when  what  may  be  termed 
the  pioneer  railroad  merger  was  attempted  at 
Erie,  Pennsylvania,  it  resulted  in  an  uprising 
and  a  subsequent  local  feeling  so  intense  that 
even  yet  in  Erie  the  echoes  have  scarcely  died. 
Indeed,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  Ameri- 
can community  has  ever  sustained  a  feud  so  vio- 
lent and  lasting.  To-day,  it  is  true,  the  matter 
may  safely  be  spoken  of,  but  so  serious  has  its 
aspect  always  been  considered  that  in  the  com- 
munity where  it  occurred  never  until  September 
6,  1903,  had  an  account  of  the  affair  been  printed 
in  a  newspaper;  and  I  only  follow  Mr.  John 
Miller,  the  painstaking  local  historian  of  the  feud, 
in  saying  that  this  Erie  war  resulted  in  more 
acute  bitterness,  in  deeper  animosities  between 
former  friends,  more  painful  differences  in  fami- 
lies, and  more  lasting  injuries  to  local  interests 
and  to  society  than  any  community,  North  or 
South,  can  show  as  the  result  of  the  Civil  War. 

Naturally,  the  only  question  that  now  arouses 
interest  is,  What  was  it  all  about  ?     And  the  an- 

279 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

swer  only  increases  the  mystification.  Two  rail- 
roads at  that  time  ran  into  Erie,  one  from  the  east 
with  a  track-gauge  of  six  feet,  and  one  from  the 
west  with  a  track-gauge  of  four  feet  ten  inches. 
The  two  roads  were  distinct  in  ownership  and 
management ;  each  had  its  own  rolling-stock  and 
locomotives,  and  each  its  little  roundhouse ;  these 
two  roundhouses  may  still  be  seen  standing  in 
the  city  of  Erie.  The  difference  in  track-gauge 
made  it  impossible  to  transfer  freight  in  carloads 
from  one  road  to  the  other,  and  passengers  from 
Buffalo  for  Cleveland  were  compelled  to  leave 
the  cars  at  Erie,  ride  across  the  town  in  'busses,  or 
walk  a  mile  to  the  other  railroad  station,  and  en- 
dure the  attendant  inconveniences.  'Bus  men, 
baggage  transfer  men  and  local  hotel  men,  having 
common  interests,  worked  together,  and,  if  con- 
nections could  be  made  to  fail,  a  night  at  an  Erie 
hotel  was  a  part  of  the  long  journey  from  Buffalo 
to  Cleveland. 

This  annoyance  was  what  some  railroad  Jim 
Hill  of  that  day  conceived  a  plan  for  doing  away 
with.  His  plan  was  radical,  revolutionary  even, 
and  so  expensive  as  to  make  it  difficult  to  carry 
out,  but  he  carried  it.  Owning  the  stock  of  one 
road,  he  set  about  acquiring  the  stock  of  the 
other,  and  announced  that  the  six-feet-track- 
gauge  was  to  be  changed  to  conform  to  the  four- 

280 


The  Early  Day  in   Railroading 

feet-ten  gauge,  in  order  that  trains  might  be  run 
from  one  road  over  the  other,  and  passengers  car- 
ried from  Cleveland  to  Buffalo  and  through  Erie 
without  change  of  cars ! 

The  townspeople  of  Erie  flew  to  arms.  Erie 
was  to  be  trodden  on,  ignored,  made  a  way  sta- 
tion, its  hotel  business  ruined  and  its  'busses  put 
out  of  business.  One  intelligent  citizen,  described 
as  a  prominent  man  in  the  town  and  a  public  edu- 
cator, urged  that  the  transfer  of  passengers  at  Erie 
meant  a  great  gain  to  Erie  because  travellers  had 
to  get  their  meals  there ;  the  transfer  of  live-stock, 
he  argued,  involved  the  expenditure  of  money  for 
feeding;  the  reloading  of  freight  gave  employ- 
ment to  a  large  force  of  freight  handlers — and  on 
arguments  such  as  these  men  were  urged  to  arms. 
The  gathering  on  the  December  morning  in  1853 
was  the  climax  of  all  the  talk.  Goaded  by  frantic 
appeals,  the  men  of  the  town  followed  their  mayor 
in  a  noisy  mob  to  the  long  wooden  railroad  bridge. 
It  was  guarded  by  a  force  of  railroad  employees 
because  the  agitation  had  for  some  time  promised 
trouble.  A  shower  of  rotten  eggs  and  missiles 
soon  dispersed  the  guard.  The  mob  attacked  the 
bridge,  and  with  shouts  and  cheers  tore  it  timber 
from  timber,  and  when  the  destruction  was  com- 
plete set  guards  over  the  ruins  and  marched  vic- 
torious back  to  town.  From  that  time  until  Feb- 

281 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

ruary  i,  1854,  when  the  railroad  succeeded  in 
getting  a  train  through,  Erie  was  in  the  hands  of 
a  mob. 

Few  of  the  men  that  wreaked  so  summary  a 
vengeance  on  the  railroad  bridge  had  a  clear  idea 
as  to  what  their  grievance  actually  was.  They 
knew  only  that  they  were  "  for  Erie."  While  the 
Erie  bridge  was  being  wrecked,  a  second  mob  at 
Harbor  Creek  tore  up  the  railroad  track  where  it 
crossed  the  Buffalo  highway.  Trains  were  stopped 
there  under  compulsion;  a  guard  was  maintained 
night  and  day,  and  the  railroad  company  was  not 
allowed  to  repair  the  damage  done.  For  a  long 
time  the  management  was  compelled  to  transfer 
its  freight  and  passengers  to  Erie  by  wagon. 

These  overt  acts,  as  the  lawyers  love  to  call 
them,  keyed  little  Erie  up  to  a  true  war  spirit. 
Men  moved  about  with  grave  faces,  and  the 
whole  community  perforce  took  sides  in  the  fight. 
The  great  majority  stood  with  the  rioters,  or  Rip- 
pers, so-called,  and  the  few  railroad  sympathisers 
were  contemptuously  dubbed  Shanghais.  Every 
effort  made  by  the  railroad  company  to  accom- 
plish its  design  was  watched.  The  townspeople 
slept  on  their  arms,  and  to  call  the  defenders  to- 
gether the  court-house  bell  rang  wildly  at  the 
the  most  unseasonable  hours.  Rumours  flew  far 
and  wide.  One  bitter  winter  morning  the  alarm 

282 


The  Early  Day  in  Railroading 

was  sounded  that  a  railroad  employee  at  Harbor 
Creek  had  driven  a  pick  through  a  Ripper's  skull. 
Forthwith  the  men  of  Erie  took  to  their  bob- 
sleighs and  cutters,  and  with  their  muskets  raced 
madly  to  Harbor  Creek.  The  rumour  proved 
false ;  an  altercation  had  taken  place,  a  pistol  had 
been  drawn,  and  a  man  wounded,  but  there  had 
been  no  murder.  Occasionally  the  ludicrous  con- 
trasted with  the  serious.  Emboldened  by  their 
success  in  destroying  railroad  property,  the  Har- 
bor Creek  Rippers  decided  one  day  to  capture  a 
train.  They  charged  the  cars  and  took  posses- 
sion, but  the  engineer  opened  his  throttle  and 
headed  with  speed  for  New  York  State.  The 
frightened  Rippers  one  by  one  dropped  off  the 
hind  end  until  only  one — "Bill"  Cooper — re- 
mained. The  trainmen  seized  "  Bill,"  now  badly 
frightened,  and  carrying  him  well  into  New  York 
State,  stopped  the  train,  threw  him  off,  and  kicked 
him  all  the  way  back  into  Pennsylvania,  where 
for  many  years  he  exhibited  his  wounds  to  sym- 
pathising friends. 

Meantime,  the  militia  had  been  called  out  by 
the  mayor  to  preserve  the  peace.  The  general 
of  the  militia  chanced  to  be  a  leading  Ripper 
named  Kilpatrick.  He  responded  eagerly  to  the 
call,  and  with  two  cannon  and  a  boisterous  force  of 
sympathisers  he  went  duly  into  camp  to  preserve 

283 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

the  peace — from  his  viewpoint.  A  large  number 
of  special  constables  were  also  called  into  service, 
their  duties  being  to  see  that  the  railroad  com- 
panies made  no  repairs  and  moved  no  cars.  The 
company  appealed  to  the  courts,  but  the  sheriff 
was  powerless  to  perform  his  duties,  and  his 
deputies  were  rotten-egged.  A  United  States 
marshal  arrived  from  Pittsburg  to  serve  an  in- 
junction on  the  rioters,  who  were  interfering  with 
the  mails.  The  Ripper  leader  stamped  the  process 
under  his  heel,  and  the  marshal  was  glad  to  get 
away  with  a  whole  skin.  A  local  editor  at  Erie, 
publishing  a  paper  named  the  Constitution,  was 
also  attorney  for  the  railroad.  He  was  attacked 
in  his  newspaper  office  and  embroiled  with  his 
friends  in  a  bloody  fight.  In  1856,  following 
another  outbreak,  the  office  of  the  Constitution  was 
gutted  one  night  by  the  Rippers,  the  books 
were  burned  in  the  street,  and  the  building  was 
razed.  The  mob  then  visited  the  editor  and  the 
railroad  attorneys  at  their  homes,  and  bombarded 
the  houses  with  stones;  but,  as  the  houses  of 
railroad  sympathisers  had  long  been  in  a  state  of 
siege,  the  shutters  were  up,  and  no  harm  was 
done  beyond  the  slight  uneasiness  such  an  expe- 
rience might  awaken  in  a  sensitive  editor's  breast. 
A  war  of  pamphlets  began,  and  one  curious  old 
Ripper,  a  Major  Fitch,  developed  a  wonderful 

284 


The  Early  Day  in  Railroading 

talent  for  rhyming,  and  his  poetry  became  one  of 
the  features  that  kept  the  fight  alive. 

This  period  of  hostilities  lasted  for  three  years. 
An  alarm  from  the  court-house  bell,  rung  with 
the  wildness  of  a  panic,  could  be  looked  for  at 
any  moment,  day  or  night.  Wherever  the  alarm 
caught  an  Erie  citizen,  or  whatever  his  occupa- 
tion, he  dropped  his  tools,  his  knife  and  fork,  or 
his  cup  of  coffee,  and  rushed  to  the  court-house. 
Weddings  were  stopped,  funerals  delayed,  and 
doctors  left  their  patients  when  the  court-house 
bell  rang.  Frequently  men  were  roused  from 
their  beds  to  assemble  at  the  court-house  where 
rumour  had  reached  the  watchers  that  the  rail- 
road was  plotting  mischief.  In  1855,  the  railroad 
company  having  restored  the  old  wooden  bridge 
torn  down  two  years  earlier,  the  Rippers  again 
marshalled  a  mob.  The  railroad  guards  were 
driven  from  their  posts,  the  bridge  was  torn 
down,  and  this  time,  to  make  the  job  complete, 
it  was  burned.  The  tension  in  the  town  all  this 
time  and  for  years  thereafter  was  such  that  the 
railroad  war  could  not  safely  be  discussed.  It 
was  a  cannon  cracker  that  might  be  depended  on 
to  explode  wherever  handled  among  friends. 

The  most  peaceable  citizens  fell  to  blows  over 
the  railroad  question,  and  special  constables  were 
appointed  in  the  town  to  enforce  an  order  forbid- 

285 


The  Strategy  of  Great  Railroads 

ding,  under  pains  and  penalties,  the  discussion  of 
the  subject.  The  townswomen  became  infected 
with  the  rancour.  The  leading  dry-goods  merchant 
of  Erie,  who  was  trying  only  to  sell  his  wares  and 
keep  out  of  trouble,  became  an  object  of  suspicion* 
and  certain  other  merchants  were  classed  with 
him  as  railroad  sympathisers.  A  meeting  of  the 
townswomen  was  called  at  a  Presbyterian  church, 
and  it  was  largely  attended.  The  merchants 
designated  as  Shanghais  were  banned  by  name, 
and  a  vote  to  refuse  to  trade  with  them  was  car- 
ried with  enthusiasm.  Here  was  boycotting  in 
an  early  day.  The  ministers  found  it  impossible 
to  keep  clear  of  the  fray,  and  the  Erie  historian 
records  instances  of  how  the  Erie  war  coloured 
the  sermons  and  cropped  out  in  the  prayers- 
From  the  pulpit  pointed  allusions  were  made  to 
the  oppressor,  to  the  rich  and  to  the  powerful, 
who  were  selling  their  birthrights  and  oppressing 
the  poor.  A  faction  of  the  members  of  one 
church  in  consequence  of  these  insinuations  with- 
drew in  a  body,  and  founded  a  church  which  still 
stands  in  Erie,  and  was  known  for  many  years  as 
the  Shanghai  church.  In  politics  the  Rippers 
were  supreme,  and  they  elected  legislators  and 
sheriffs  year  after  year.  The  courts,  however, 
finally  disposed  of  the  matters  at  issue.  Conces- 
sions were  made  to  Erie  interests,  but  the  track- 

286 


The  Early  Day  in  Railroading 

gauge  was  changed,  the  final  compromise  being 
at  the  present  standard  of  four  feet  eight  and 
one-half  inches,  and  the  consolidated  roads,  which 
now  constitute  a  part  of  the  Lake  Shore  and 
Michigan  Southern,  succeeded  in  running  trains 
through  Erie  without  transferring  passengers  by 
'bus. 

The  fight  for  industrial  progress  has  thus  been 
a  singularly  fierce  one,  even  among  so  progressive 
a  people  as  our  own.  On  the  question  of  consol- 
idations intelligent  people  differ  quite  as  strongly 
as  they  did  in  the  days  of  the  Erie  war;  but 
consolidations  are  likely  to  go  successfully  on,  as 
they  went  then,  just  as  long  as  the  industrial  situ- 
ation calls  for  them. 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  ] 

OF 

' 


287 


RETURN  TO  the  circulation  desk  of  any 
University  of  California  Library 

or  to  the 

NORTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 
Bldg.  400,  Richmond  Field  Station 
University  of  California 
Richmond,  CA  94804-4698 

ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 

•  2-month  loans  may  be  renewed  by  calling 
(510)642-6753 

•  1-year  loans  may  be  recharged  by  bringing 
books  to  NRLF 

•  Renewals  and  recharges  may  be  made 
4  days  prior  to  due  date 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 
NOV  2  8  2006 


DD20   12M   1-05 


YB   1882! 


* 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


I 


